Olga Zeveleva is Assistant Professor in Conflict Studies. She is a political sociologist specializing in human rights, prisons, and state violence. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK), and a PhD in Social Science Research Methods from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia). She received an MA degree in International Relations from the Free University Berlin (Berlin, Germany). Before coming to Utrecht, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC project "Gulag Echoes in the Multicultural Prison" at the University of Helsinki, focusing on group-making and violence in contemporary post-Soviet correctional institutions.

From autumn 2024, Olga Zeveleva will be leading the KONE Foundation-funded research project "Polycrisis of violence: Ecofeminist perspectives on the war in Ukraine and the military-prison nexus (PUMP)." 

She has carried out qualitative field research in Germany, Estonia, Ukraine, and Russia, and has published her work in peer-reviewed academic journals such as The British Journal of Sociology, Current Sociology, and Punishment and Society. She has also written op-eds for The New York Times, Politico, HuffPost, and the results of her work have been featured on CNN, the BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian, TIME, and other media.

Latest publications: Google Scholar