School of Social and Political Science

Background

I received my PhD degree in Sociology at St. Petersburg State University in 2013. My thesis was aimed at exploring how Giddens’s theory of structuration works to explain in what forms drug use is produced and reproduced in Russia.

In 2017, I co-founded the Support, Research and Development Center (https://srdcenter.org), a Kyiv-based NGO. The center was awarded multiple grants to conduct qualitative studies exploring the fields of drug use, opioid agonist therapies and prisoners’ rights in Ukraine.

During my fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, I plan to work on a book project. Drawing on nearly six years of extensive ethnographic research in various medical facilities and prisons and analysing the legal and policy documents governing the field of drug use, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis treatment in Ukraine, I seek to examine the thirty-year period of development of those fields of care and punishment as a broader metaphor for post-Soviet transformation.

Selected publications:

2025 Dmitrieva A., Stepanov V. The undeclared war on drugs in the post-Soviet limbo, invited contribution to the collective book edited by K. Seear and S. Flacks, Judging Drugs: Critical Issues in Law and Society, Cambridge University Press (upcoming)

2024 Dmitrieva A., Stepanov V., Titar I. (e)Managing the uncertainty of tuberculosis in the post-Soviet limbo: Tracking prisoners' coerced mobility for treatment in Ukrainian prisons, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 349, 116894. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116894

2023 Stepanov V., Dmitrieva A. Pyatak Drifters: The Making of Social and Cultural Places in Ukrainian Cities, M. Germes, S. Höhne, & L. Klaus (Eds.), Narcotic Cities: Counter Cartographies of Drugs and Space. JOVIS Verlag GmbH, pp. 274-285. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783986120184-026

2022 Dmitrieva A., Stepanov V., Mazhnaya A. Managing opioid agonist therapy programs in the post-Soviet limbo, Contemporary Drug Problems 49 (2). 148-169 pp. https://doi.org/10.1177/00914509211063587

2021 Dmitrieva A., Stepanov V., Svyrydova K., Lukash I., Doltu S., MD; Golichenko M., Kalivoshko V., Khanyukov E., Kosmukhamedova Z., Torkunov O., Zagrebelniy O. More evidence or stronger political will: exploring the feasibility of needle and syringe programs in Ukrainian prisons, Harm Reduction Journal 18 (10). 1-14 pp. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-020-00459-z