Dr Marina Sapritsky is a Visiting Fellow affiliated with the Program for the Study of Religion and Non-Religion and the Anthropology Department at the LSE. She received her BA in International Relations from Boston University (2002) and a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics (2011). Her research focuses on the former Soviet Union (specifically Ukraine) and on migrant communities of ex-Soviets abroad. She is particularly interested in the process of religious revival and community-building efforts that took place in the aftermath of the Soviet regime and the effect these changes had on social relations and city life. Her doctoral research, conducted in 2005-2007, was based in the southern port city of Odessa where she focused on the transformation of Jewish practices among remaining and returning Jewish residents exposed to new forms of Jewishness that have appeared in the city since Ukraine’s independence through the interventions of international organisations and local initiatives. Her research demonstrates how, in post-Soviet times processes of religious revival are highly contingent and multidirectional, at times perceived as a threat that leads to social ruptures or as an opportunity that leads to new solidarities and networks. Dr. Sapritsky continues to maintain close ties to Odessa and is engaged in a number of local projects and museum work that support the cultural and social life of the city. She has taught courses in Anthropology at the Odessa National University and at the LSE.
Her current research project New Directions in Transnational Jewish Identity: Russian-speaking Jewry in London is sponsored by the Brandeis-Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry and focuses on the most recent wave of Russian-speaking Jewish migrants in London and their ties with Russian culture and language and engagement with local Jewish life.
Publications
Forthcoming. Belonging in Multiple Places: Experiences of Home among Russian Speaking Jewish Migrants in Ukraine. In Traveling Towards Home, edited by Tom Selwyn and Nicola Frost. New York: Berghahn Books.
2016. Home in the Diaspora? Jewish Returnees and Transmigrants in Ukraine. In The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel and Germany, edited by Zvi Gitelman. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
2015. From Evrei to Iudei: Turning or Returning to Faith? State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide. Special Issue on Judaism after the USSR, Old and New, Religious and National. 3(33): 224-254.
2013. Returnees or Immigrants: Socio--Anthropological Analysis of “Russian” Israelis in Odessa. Diasporas. Special Issue on Israeli Diasporas: Where, How and Why. 2: 47–66.
2012. Negotiating Cosmopolitanism: Migration, Religious Education and Shifting Jewish Orientations in post-Soviet Odessa.” In Post-Cosmopolitan Cities: Explorations of Urban Coexistence, edited by Caroline Humphrey and Vera Skvirskaja. New York: Berghahn Books.