Juri Wasenmüller

Collaborative Writing Practices and Decolonial Narrative Strategies in the Context of the Former USSR

This research project explores how collaborative literary writing practices can contribute to decolonial historiographies in the context of the former Soviet Union.

The starting point of the project is the challenge of self-positioning within postsoviet diasporic contexts in Germany. In the context of German-language migration studies, the focus is typically on the relation of this migrant group to German society. In contrast, this doctoral project centers on discourses of decolonization and the interrogation of one's own entanglement in structures and continuities of Russian imperialism within migrant and diasporic contexts. In doing so, Juri engages with perspectives that have been negotiated in recent years within discursive and activist spaces around the term "postost" but have so far received little academic attention.

Juri Wasenmüller's work responds to the conceptual and narrative gaps in capturing complex experiences of multiple belonging and in-between positions within ambivalent (post-)Soviet power relations.

Using the example of the history of ethnic Germans in Kazakhstan, Juri Wasenmüller traces how imperial categorizations, Stalinist repressions, and Soviet nationality policies continue to shape historical narratives and the self-perception of various (post-)Soviet population groups to this day.

The aim is to develop new narrative approaches to a historiography critical of racism and colonialism through processes of collaborative (autoethnographic) writing.

The work addresses both historiographical and methodological questions:

How can stories be told when access to knowledge is fragmented by political repression, the absence of archives, and collective trauma? What characterizes decolonial narrative strategies? What new possibilities for self-positioning emerge through engagement with previously untold pasts?

Education

2020 – 2025: European University Viadrina, M.A. in Sociocultural Studies

2021 – 2022: European University at St. Petersburg, M.A. Russian and Eurasian Studies (IMARES), research stay on “Queer Post-Soviet Migration” in cooperation with the Gender Studies Program at EUSP; funded by the “Metropolises in Eastern Europe” scholarship (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)

2016: Exchange semester at the National University of Colombia, funded through the PROMOS scholarship program

2014 – 2018: Free University of Berlin, B.A. in Political Science 

Scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation) throughout B.A. and M.A. studies

Professional Experience

2022–2024: Chair of the Board at Neue deutsche Medienmacher*innen

2022–2024: Research Assistant, Chair of Comparative Cultural and Social Anthropology, European University Viadrina (Prof. Dr. Kira Kosnick)

2019–2020: Social Media and Community Editor at taz

Since 2018: Freelance journalist and columnist, with publications including taz, Missy Magazine, and Zeit Online

04/2026: Recipient of the Georg R. Schroubek Early Career Award for the master's thesis Collaborative Approaches to a Decolonial Reflection on Ethnic German Identity in Kazakhstan.

11/2020: „Migrantische Selbstorganisation gegen Klassismus und Rassismus“. In: Seeck, Francis / Theißl, Brigitte (Hg.), Solidarisch gegen Klassismus: organisieren, intervenieren, umverteilen, Münster: Unrast, S. 157–167.

Lectures (Selection)

03/2026: “Writing About Class” – essay, PostOstCafé: Klasse und Krawall, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin.

12/2025: Workshop: “Writing oneself into the Text” – tracing epistemic critiques of knowledge production through writing exercises and re-readings. Co-organized with Lukas Graf, Annika Haas, and Noah Grossmann for the Research Training Group Aesthetic Practice, Kulturcampus Hildesheim.

09/2025: “Entangled Histories of Ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union – Decolonial Historiographies and Collaborative Writing Practices,” Summer School A Postcolonial Condition: Art, Literature, Film, and the Everyday in Eastern Europe, organized by the Department of Art History and East European Studies, University of Hamburg.

05/2025: “Collaborative Research in the Context of ‚Russian-German‘ Migration from Kazakhstan,” X3 Spaces Creative Fest, Berlin.

03/2024: Expert workshop: “Post-Soviet Lifeworlds in Germany,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Steinbach.

11/2023: (with Masha Beketova) “Decolonizing (German) Journalism: Writing about Post-Socialist Migration,” n-ost, Berlin.

Moderation (Selection)

04/2023: "Antislavicism, Whiteness, and Racism in Germany and Western Europe" with Anna Safuta, Angelika Kim, and Dennis Chiponda, as part of the exhibition (өmә), Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin

10/2021: "Go West? Eastern Europe, Decoloniality & Migration" with Madina Tlostanova, Jannis Panagiotidis, and Lesia Kulchynska; Kampnagel, Hamburg

03/2021: "On Postsoviet Migration Experiences" with Darja Klingenberg, Jannis Panagiotidis, and Dmitrij Kapitelman; *Мыteinander* series, Jewish Museum, Frankfurt (Main)