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Sophie Lambroschini

Researcher and Principal investigator of LimSpaces at Centre Marc Bloch

Tel. + 49 17623674658

Email: sophie_lambro@cmb.hu-berlin.de

What is your project and why did you choose it?

 

I investigate how norms, values, and practices in a corporation are reshaped by conflicts and how companies adapt to war. My focus is on utilities that rely on extensive infrastructure networks to supply populations with critical resources such as power and water. I began working in the Ukrainian Donbas in 2018, following my PhD dissertation on Soviet bankers working on capital markets during the Cold War. At that point, I had lived in Ukraine for over ten years and, with the war in 2014, had become interested in how the economic linkages across the front line of the geopolitical conflict affected the redrawing of the borders and identifications for the people living there. I then decided to focus on one particular case study of a water supply company that managed to work and have employees on both sides of the demarcation line separating Kyiv-controlled territories from the Moscow-backed territories. Both projects explore corporate day-to-day accommodation to geopolitical fractures. My dissertation focused on financial elites. MY current projects looks at ordinary workers : plumbers, technicians, local managers and how they adapt to the risk and instability of a new frontline.


And what brought your interest to this region?

I have always been interested in the former Soviet Union, having lived and studied in Moscow before the USSR’s collapse. Professionally, I began as a journalist in Moscow and Kyiv, then I retrained as a historian with a socioeconomic perspective. My specific interest in Ukraine developed both after living there and in the context of my previous work in Moscow, observing the different narratives running in parallel and conflicting with one another to shape the current Ukrainian society and identity.


How has Russia's war against Ukraine affected your project?

I began my field research in Donbas several years ago. This allowed me to study in depth how a company and its employees operate in the context of war before the full-blown Russian invasion in February 2022. Over the past few months I was able to share some of my research on the consequences of war and critical infrastructure with a broader audience through media interviews and short articles. The water supply company I was investigating is barely functional: the water pipes and other infrastructure was destroyed by the Russian advance into Donbas and many employees have had to flee their homes. I am now drawing out a new perspective from my material - how people, power and public utilities are connected in the context of war.  Since February 2022 I shifted my project to include other case studies. The ongoing war means that the economic, political, and social order in all regions of Ukraine is constantly changing: regions occupied in the spring by Russian troops are liberated but subjected to missile and drone attacks; relatively safe localities suffer from the power outages caused by Russian attacks on the Ukrainian grid; battlefields move; relatively in safer towns that have become havens for internally displaced populations grids and sewerage struggle to satisfy growing demand.... Violent conflict created a particularly unstable environment and increases the degree of uncertainty manyfold. The war has made some aspects of the project much more immediate as public utilities, whether power, water, or sewage, have become critical to biological survival.

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Sophie Lambroschini holds a PhD in Slavic studies from Nanterre University in France. She pursued an initial career in journalism, exploring Russia and Ukraine extensively.  She is an associate member of the Center for Russian, Caucasian, and Central European Studies (CERCEC) at the EHESS in Paris. Her research has focused on the sociology of infrastructure networks in conflict settings.  A revised edition of her book "Ukrainiens" (ed. Ateliers Henry Dougier) was published in 2022.

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Water technicians in Toretsk, Ukraine, February 2022. ©Sophie Lambroschini

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