Nathan Brand is a PhD candidate in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. His doctoral research on the rise of the right-wing in Russia focuses on the visual dimension of their mobilisation. His broader research interests lie in cultural semiotics and contemporary Russian cinema. His work with the Cultural and Social Narratives Lab will engage questions of national identity formation and postcolonialism, looking at how Armenian national identity is represented in museum exhibitions around the city of Yerevan. His work will situate exhibition spaces in direct conversation with their place in their city as he aims to construct a topography of museum exhibits relating to national and postcolonial identity.
Yana Bondar is a photographer from Belarus. She is interested in archival photography, memory studies, and the environment.Yana finds it important to reflect on human rights and the manifestations of violence in the everyday life of people through her art. She participated in several workshops and exhibitions in Belarus, Russia, the Netherlands, and other countries.
Varvara Sudnik is an artist from Belarus who participated in CSN Lab's summer art residency in 2022. She is interested in topics related to social injustice, fear, discrimination, gender inequality, and everyday life practices. Varvara mostly creates art in the formats of video art, text, installation, visuals and handcraft. She had exhibitions in Belarus, Russia, Germany and other countries.
Taryn Bell joined CSN Lab from the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH) in 2021. As an intern, she was involved in the “Balat: Living Together” project exploring the memory of a multicultural district in Turkey. In this regard, she gathered significant archival materials such as anecdotes and stories, which were later included in a book.
Freddie Coombes is one of the interns who joined CSN Lab from the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH) in 2021. As a researcher, he studied the representation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the anglophone and francophone worlds. His project resulted in a series of long-read blog posts covering the map of the conflict, a contextual study of discourses on the conflict in light of imperial legacies and geopolitical considerations in the region and an educational presentation of materials to people unfamiliar with the situation, through the use of timelines, testimony collected by other outlets, and comparisons to other post-Soviet international disputes.