{"id":796,"date":"2021-05-31T19:53:45","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T19:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregorygan.com\/writing\/?page_id=796"},"modified":"2021-08-12T20:03:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T20:03:58","slug":"research-statement","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gregorygan.com\/writing\/research-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Statement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n <\/div>
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Research Statement

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In 2017, Moscow authorities launched a sweeping urban redevelopment project, which, over the next fifteen years will see the demolition and reconstruction of over five thousand panel apartment blocks, and the displacement of over a million Muscovites. These prefabricated panel apartment blocks, tenderly nicknamed khrushchevki <\/i>after their progenitor, Nikita Khrushchev, were themselves part of a massive industrial housing redevelopment of the 1950s and 60s, which aimed to resolve a massive housing shortage by allocating private quarters to eligible families. Asking Muscovites to vote in a two-thirds majority on the fate of each building slated for demolition by asking residents whether they “felt at home,” Moscow authorities exposed an affective dimension to placemaking, which provoked a wide set of reactions, ranging from enthusiasm, to acquiescence, and to violent political protest.

In a two-year postdoctoral project held with CRC 1171: Affective Societies, and awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Gregory Gan will examine diverse responses to “renovation” of panel homes in a transnational context between Moscow, Russia and Berlin Germany. What emotional responses do residents experience in the process of displacement from their former homes? How can anthropologists develop appropriate methods that respond to individual stories often overlooked in massive urban redevelopment projects? What new insights could be gleaned by adapting a new set of creative methods in a time where physical ethnographic fieldwork may be impossible?

In my doctoral research on Russian transnational migration, the experience of displacement was often associated with loss of home, which was articulated using metaphorical or symbolic language. Memories of one\u2019s home became \u201cfrozen,\u201d domestic objects began to feel \u201cforeign,\u201d and journeys away from home were compared to \u201cwalking on the Moon.” Like migration, the loss of home is a deeply felt experience, and I propose to investigate how such experiences are catalyzed into political narratives, or enunciated as an experience of discontinuity, dissonance, or melancholia. 

As part of my ethnographic fieldwork, I am meeting with participants, either in physical space, or virtually, and sketching their living spaces using watercolours. Almost a century ago, art educator Kimon Nicolaides argued that painting is a task that is processual, embodied, and based on having physical contact utilizing as many of the senses as can reach the eye at one time. I propose to create rapport with participants by using techniques that commemorate and interpret their lived experience of the home, and that resonate with sensory and collaborative methods of research gathering. The resulting research will strive to present anthropological knowledge in both innovative and traditional ways, shared with a wide audience online, through art exhibitions, and using traditional publication media.
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