Lois Kalb is a PhD candidate at the European University Institute in Florence and a research affiliate of the partnership project “Deindustrialization and the Politics of our Time” at Concordia University in Montréal. Her work sits at the intersection of urban history and social anthropology and focuses on urban transformations, lived experiences, and urban commons in Soviet-era neighborhoods.
Her dissertation examines how residents of Riga’s Soviet-era housing came to inhabit and make sense of their neighborhoods during the Soviet period and the decades that followed. Drawing on oral history interviews, the project traces the generational, gendered, and classed dimensions of Soviet urbanization and post-socialist urban change in Riga. The research has received support from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies.
As a fellow at YCIE, Lois will complete her dissertation while developing a comparative project on the politics of urban belonging in post-earthquake housing reconstruction projects in Armenia and Uzbekistan. During her time in Armenia, a central focus will be on the city Gyumri, where she will conduct archival and field research into Soviet housing provision and reconstruction following the earthquake of 1988.