Boris Melnichenko

Biography

A graduate of EHESS (master’s degree in Sociology), Boris Melnichenko is a doctoral student at Center for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies (CERCEC UMR 8083 CNRS, EHESS). He has been working on his thesis since 2020, entitled “The digital face of the Russian state”: a sociology of public interface design in Russia, under the supervision of Françoise Daucé.

His doctoral research focuses on the development of public websites in the social sphere in Russia. In his thesis, based on an ethnographic study of a state-owned startup in Moscow, he conducts a study of the functioning of web projects aimed at improving the citizen experience in the context of an authoritarian regime, a few months before the outbreak of the devastating war in Ukraine.

Following his field experiences, B. Melnichenko has been conducting a methodological workshop “Collaborative autoethnography of vulnerability” at the university in exile Svobodnij (Free University/Brīvā Universitāte) since January 2023. This pro bono pedagogical work is dedicated to providing therapeutic and methodological support to students facing the dangers of war and life under authoritarian regimes, as well as reflecting on the uses of ethnographic research in hybrid practices at the intersection of activism, art, design, psychiatric therapy, care relationships, and education.

At the CIS, Boris Melnichenko is a research engineer under the supervision of Ksenia Ermoshina and as part of the CultureIA research project. He is conducting field research among engineers, developers, machine learning specialists, and AI experts on the subject of cultural history and ethnography of AI.