Dr. Marina Sapritsky-Nahum

Dr. Marina Sapritsky-Nahum

Research Assistant

in the research project: Knowledge Architectures:  Mapping Structures of Jewish Heritagization Processes on Communal, Organizational and Academic levels in Post-1945

Research areas:
Ukrainian Jewish heritage, anthropology, religion, and urban culture

Contact:
E-Mail: Dr. Marina Sapritsky-Nahum

 

Previous Research:

  • Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s work focuses on post-Soviet Jewish communities in Ukraine, cultural heritage, religion, migration, philanthropy and urban culture. Her research brings together Anthropology, History, and Jewish Studies concentrating geographically on Ukraine and its diaspora communities abroad. She is particularly interested in the process of religious revival and community-building in the aftermath of state socialism and the effect of these changes on social relations and city life. She has written about concepts of home and diaspora; morality and return migration; cosmopolitanism; religious adherence; philanthropy and heritage travel. 
  • Marina’s initial research was based in the southern port city of Odesa, Ukraine where she focused on the transformation of Jewish practices and the everyday lives of remaining and returning Jewish residents in a historically “cosmopolitan” city affected by processes of nationalism, globalisation, mass migration and international development. Marina has published several articles and chapters based on this research and she is currently finishing a manuscript provisionally entitled Negotiating Traditions: Transformation of Jewish life in post-Soviet Odesa, Ukraine.
  • She has also conducted research on Russian speaking Jewry and Global Judaism in London, UK. Her project New Directions in Transnational Jewish Identity: Russian-speaking Jewry in London was sponsored by the Brandeis-Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry and Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Her new research looks at Ukrainian Jewish Heritage as part of a larger project Knowledge Architectures:  Mapping Structures of Jewish Heritagization Processes on Communal, Organizational and Academic levels in Post-1945 Europe.
  • Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Marina has also been writing about the effects of war on everyday life of Jewish Ukrainians who remain in the country and the Ukrainian Jewish refugees in Europe and the UK and the fragmentation and remaking of historical narratives and heritage discourses. 
  • Applying anthropological methods, Marina has also worked as a consultant for international and local Jewish outreach programmes in Ukraine and in the UK. Keen to engage with the wider public, she is a regular contributor to the Religion and Global Society blog at the LSE and has written more widely for international newspapers and magazines.


Selected Publications:

  • Forthcoming: Negotiating Traditions: Transformation of Jewish life in post-Soviet Odesa, Ukraine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Forthcoming: “Fragmented Histories, Fragmented Lives.” In Catherine Wanner, ed., Dispossession: Imperial Legacies and Russia’s War on Ukraine. London: Routledge.
  • 2018: “Between a Home and a Homeland: Experiences of Jewish Return Migrants in Ukraine.” In Tom Selwyn and Nicola Frost, eds., Traveling Towards Home. New York: Berghahn Books.
  • 2016: “Home in the Diaspora? Jewish Returnees and Transmigrants in Ukraine.” In Zvi Gitelman, ed., The New Jewish Diaspora. Rutgers University Press, pp. 60–75.
  • 2015: “From Evrei to Eudei: Turning or Returning to Faith?”  State, Religions and Church, Special Issue Judaism after USSR: Old and New, Religious and National. 3 (33): 224–55. Moscow (in Russian). www.religion.ranepa.ru/sites/default/files/GRC_3-2015_final++.pdf
  • 2013: “Returnees or Immigrants: Anthropological Analysis of ‘Russian’ Israelis in Odessa.” Special Issue, Israeli Diasporas: Where, How and Why. Diaspora 2013 (2): 47–66. Moscow (in Russian).
  • 2012: “Negotiating Cosmopolitanism: Migration, Religious Education and Shifting Jewish Orientations in post-Soviet Odessa.” In Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja, eds., Explorations of the Post-Cosmopolitan City, New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 65–93.
  • 2011: Book Review: Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism, by Catherine Wanner. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17 (2): 431–32.
  • 2006: “Tuda ili Obratno?” Moria Almanac 6: 12–20 (in Russian).

Public Media Contributions:

2022:


2020:

 

Last modified: 2023-04-26

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