Elisabeth Kovtiak

Elisabeth Kovtiak is a PhD student at Charles University in Prague. In her studies, she is focusing on the role of arts in citizen activism, collective memory, trauma and identity in Belarus other post-Socialist countries. Apart from doing scholarly research, she experiments with artistic techniques such as video making, installations and embroidery, addressing social issues and cultural challenges in her works. Prior to starting her work as a researcher, she worked as a columnist and journalist, writing on Culture and Visual Arts. She also worked as a project manager at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Minsk and on a range of independent cultural initiatives. Her academic interests include collective memory, digital scholarship in social studies, memory studies, nostalgia, popular culture, public spaces, sociology of forgetting, vernacular memory, and visual studies.