Ksenia Litvinenko is a historian of architecture based in Berlin. Her research bridges institutional and environmental histories of architecture, with a focus on the Soviet Union.
Ksenia’s writing has appeared in the Journal of Architecture, Architecture Beyond Europe, e-flux Architecture, Les Cahiers de la Recherche Architecturale Urbaine et Paysagère, and edited volumes such as Rethinking Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century (2024), Theaterbauwissen. Objekte, Medien und Diskurse zwischen Kaiserreich und Kalter Krieg (2025), and The Gift: Spaces of Global Socialism and Their Afterlives (2026). She has lectured at the Department of Architecture, the University of Manchester and the Bauhaus University, Weimar. Her work has been supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Open Society Archives, and the German Historical Institute Moscow.
Ksenia holds a PhD  in Architecture and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space. She is currently writing a history of mobile architecture and fly-in, fly-out urbanism in the context of petroleum and natural gas extraction in Western Siberia during the final decades of the Cold War.
Curriculum Vitae
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Education
2023
PhD in Architecture, University of Manchester
2017
MA in Comparative History, Central European University
2016
BA in History, Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg 
Academic Positions
2024 — 2026
Postdoctoral Researcher, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space
2019 — 2022
Teaching Assistant and Senior Tutor, Department of Architecture, UoM
Fellowships
2025
Research Fellowship, Canadian Centre for Architecture
2023
Seed fellowship, Leibniz Research Alliance “Value of the Past”
2023
Visegrad Scholarship at the Open Society Archives
2019
Research Fellowship, Deutsches Historisches Institut Moskau
Curriculum Design & Instruction
2025 — 2026
Moving Architectures, Department of European Urban Studies, Bauhaus University Weimar
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2021 — 2022
Architecture as Collaboration, Department of Architecture, the University of Manchester
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Presentations
2025
‘Hydrocarbon Extraction and a Transient Turn in Late Soviet Urbanism’, Session 96, ‘Moving Out of the Mikroraion: Neighbourhood Debates in Industrial Cities and the Limits of Growth in the Soviet Union, 1960s-80s,’ The Eleventh Biennial Urban History Association Conference “Metropolitan Majorities,” Los Angeles, California, 11 October 2025
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2025
‘Extractive Movements: Portable Architecture Across Northern Oil Lands’, Research Fellow Seminar, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 31 July 2025
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2025
‘Mediating permafrost: landscape zoning maps, building norms, and foundations of Soviet extractivism in Siberia and the Far East’, Conference and Exhibition Back to Frozen Earth. Permafrost in Social Theory and Beyond, Sciences Po (Paris) 17-18 June 2025
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Convened Academic Events
2024
Co-Convener (w/ Nikolay Erofeev), Conference Panel ‘Spaces and Imaginaries of Socialist Extractivism,’ Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Boston
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2022
Co-organiser (w/ Dr Oxana Gourinovitch and Dr Jenny Price), International Research Workshop ‘Architecture at Work: Institutional Landscapes of Socialist Design and Construction’ International Heritage Centre, Bauhaus University Weima
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2022
Assistant Organizer (w/ Prof Łukasz Stanek), International Research Workshop ‘The Gift of Architecture: Spaces of Global Socialism and their Afterlives,’ Manchester Architecture Research Group, The University of Manchester
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Memberships
Urban History Association (UHA)
European Architecture Research Network (EAHN)
Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA)
Leibniz Research Alliance ‘Value of the Past,’ Research Group ‘Valorization and Utilization’
International Heritage Centre, Bauhaus University Weimar