Julie Deschepper, winner of the 2019 Best Thesis Award

Julie Deschepper is Assistant Professor in Heritage and Museum Studies at Utrecht University. She holds a doctorate from Inalco and trained as a historian of Russia and the USSR, specializing in heritage issues in the post-socialist space. Her first book, from her thesis, Les temps du patrimoine soviétique. Une histoire matérielle de la Russie, will soon be published by CNRS Editions. Before joining UU, Julie worked as a scientific assistant at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institute) and associate professor at the University of Bologna, and was awarded a Max Weber postdoctoral fellowship at the European University Institute. In 2024, she published the collective volume Time and Material Culture. Rethiniking Soviet Temporalities, co-edited with Antony Kalashnikov and Federica Rossi (Routledge) and the special issue "She is made of stone. Women and Monuments in Socialist and Post-Socialist Public Space" with Milica Prokic and Hana Gründler (Aspasia). Her current work focuses on the militarization of culture and Russia's use of heritage in Ukraine since 2014. She is co-founder of the Collectif de recherche sur la Russie Contemporaine pour l'Analyse de ses Nouvelles Trajectoires (CORUSCANT).