DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY

Ekaterina is a doctoral student studying global Modernism/Avant-garde at the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. She is particularly interested in the early Soviet experiments in design and new material culture development as part of social and cultural policies, as well as in how the economy and industrial environment shape cultural production in these fields. In 2009, Ekaterina received her BA in International Journalism from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in Moscow. She graduated in 2012 with a Specialist Diploma from Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts and in 2017 received her MA from the Theory and History of Arts Department at the Russian State University for the Humanities. Her thesis, Olympic parade uniform: functions and aesthetic, examined the history of Olympic parade uniforms, and how the political environment shapes decisions in fashion design. One of Ekaterina’s prior research projects resulted in a book, “Sneakers. A Cultural History of Sport Footwear” (NLO Publisher, 2018), the first academic book on this topic published in Russian. She also published on the history of Soviet fashion and sporting goods production, sneakerheads as fandom and participatory culture, and the secondary sneaker market. Her list of published peer-review works includes: “Sneakerheads as Fans and Sneaker Fandom as Participatory Culture (Transformative Works and Cultures); “Great Expectations and Unfulfilled Dreams: the Design and Production of Sportswear in the Late USSR (the 1960s–1991)” (Entreprises et histories”, and “The semiotic heritage of grunge and the distressed sneakers trend” (European Journal of Cultural Studies). Prior to her current studies, Ekaterina spent more than ten years working as a sports writer and reporter.