Dr. Sofia Gavrilova: Transferred Digital History Practices without Reproducing Power: Lessons, Limits, and Risks

Dr. Sofia Gavrilova: Transferred Digital History Practices without Reproducing Power: Lessons, Limits, and Risks

The first seminar of the seminar series "Digital History in/of Central Asia and the South Caucasus" will be held on February 12, 14:00 CET | 17:00 Yerevan & Tbilisi | 18:00 Tashkent & Almaty | 19:00 Bishkek online in Zoom.

Topic: Transferred Digital History Practices without Reproducing Power: Lessons, Limits, and Risks.

Invited expert: Dr. Sofia Gavrilova, Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig, Germany.

Language: English.

Registration and Zoom-link: fau.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/4NeC_Z0LSOqfwOIXibug5A

Abstract

This talk interrogates the transfer of digital history practices not as a neutral process of methodological diffusion, but as a politically and epistemically charged act. Taking the Russian context as a case, it asks what – if anything – can be productively borrowed from Russian digital archives, online museums, and educational platforms, and where such transfers risk reproducing hierarchical and colonial modes of knowledge production.

Rather than treating digital tools as universally portable, the talk differentiates between technical infrastructures, interface design, narrative regimes, and institutional arrangements. It argues that while certain technical solutions may be adaptable, representational logics and narrative authorities are deeply embedded in specific historical, political, and imperial contexts. When detached from these conditions, they can silently reinscribe asymmetries of voice, visibility, and expertise.

The talk identifies key sites where contextual sensitivity becomes indispensable: the politics of source selection, visual grammars of legitimacy, claims to archival completeness, and the institutional positioning of digital history projects. It concludes by proposing a set of critical questions for reflexive reuse – aimed at enabling translation without extraction, and methodological learning without epistemic dominance.