Julie Deschepper is an Assistant Professor in Heritage and Museum Studies in the Cultural History section of Utrecht University. 

Trained as a historian of Russia, and in the broad field of heritage studies, she specialises in the material culture of socialism, with a focus on the cultural heritage of the USSR. Working at the crossroads between cultural history, critical heritage studies, and art history, she considers heritage an entanglement of discourses, uses, practices, and experiences. At Utrecht, she teaches courses within the MA Cultural History and Heritage, and she is the co-organizer of the Heritage Lab.

Julie holds a PhD from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco, Paris), winner of the Inalco Best PhD Prize 2019. Based on her dissertation, her first monograph Les temps du patrimoine. Une histoire matérielle de la Russie (1917-2017) is forthcoming with CNRS Edition. Exploring (de-)heritagization processes of Soviet monuments, the book writes a cultural history of Russia through its material culture and contributes to the knowledge of heritage beyond the Western world. 

She currently works, both as a heritage scholar and practitioner, on the weaponization of culture and the uses of heritage during the war in Ukraine, and is the co-founder of the Research Collective on Contemporary Russie for the Study of its New Trajectories (CORUSCANT). She is currently the co-coordinator of the Francophone Network of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies. 

Prior to joining Utrecht University, Julie was the Scientific Assistant of the Director and a Postdoctoral Research Collaborator at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institute, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna. She also held a Max Weber Fellowship at the History Department of the European University Institute (2019-20), a Research and Teaching Assistant at the Russian Studies Department of Inalco (2019), and a Junior Lecturer at the University Paris VIII (2018).

From 2011 to 2014, Julie was a curatorial assistant in Paris Musées, Musée national d'art moderne and Musée Jean Moulin. This education between research and practice of heritage encouraged her interdisciplinarity and her predisposition to develop projects with cultural institutions.