Dr Kristina Pikovskaia is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the School of Social and Political Science. Her research interests include informal economies in Africa, lived experiences of citizenship, and political subjectivity. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, Kristina completed her master's (2017) and doctorate (2021) in International Development at the University of Oxford. Her PhD thesis ‘Vendors Keep This Economy Running’: Economic Informalisation and Citizenship in Harare, Zimbabwe' looked at the impact of profound economic informalisation in Zimbabwe on people's ideas and practices of citizenship. She engaged with themes, such as colonial and postcolonial modernity, resilience and resistance, and organisational life in the informal sector. A part of this research is published in the Journal of Southern African Studies. Her previous research also included a study of narratives of Soviet military specialists and interpreters who provided assistance to Angola during the cold war.
On my current Leverhulme Trust-funded project, I explore women’s experiences of lived citizenship in urban Zimbabwe and seek to find out why despite liberation, democratisation and deracialisation of urban spaces, and neoliberal economic reforms, economic opportunities for many women in urban areas have been limited to informal and intimate economies.