Social and legal anthropologist Nataliya Tchermalykh (University of Geneva, Switzerland) is awarded an ERC Starting Grant

Dr Nataliya Tchermalykh is Research Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in the Faculty of Anthropology and Sociology. A legal anthropologist by training, her work explores the intersections of law, performance, and visual politics in postcolonial and transnational contexts. She is the editor of the forthcoming volume Subversive Intrusions: How Activist Interventions Redefine the Museum (2026) and the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project ICONS in Crisis: Exploring Global Iconoclastic Politics in the 21st Century (2026-2031), in which one case study is dedicated to Ukraine. Her research examines how artistic and activist interventions challenge established authority, transform institutional spaces, and generate new imaginaries of justice across global settings.

Nataliya Tchermalykh received her BA in Oriental Studies in 2004 and her MA in Oriental Studies in 2006 from Kyiv National Linguistic University (Ukraine), where she subsequently worked as a Junior Lecturer in Japanese Studies. In 2019, she completed her PhD in anthropology and sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, under the supervision of Prof. Grégoire Mallard. She later joined the Interdisciplinary Centre for Children’s Rights Studies at the University of Geneva as a Senior Lecturer, where she led the research project Can a Child Sue a State? A socio-anthropological inquiry into prerequisites of children’s access to international justice, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under the SPARK scheme.