Dr. Mark E. Simon

Mark Simon is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology.

His research projects are focused on the issues of governmentality of migration policies, political accommodation of diversity and artistic self-expressions of migrants in European and post-Soviet contexts. In 2018-2019, he conducted a comparative study on theatrical productions in Berlin and Moscow featuring artists with migration experience. In 2019-2022, he led a research project dedicated to cultural activism of migrants from Central Asia in four large Russian cities.

Under his research fellowship at the Institute, he is exploring the political expressions of artists in exile who reside in Germany.

Selected Publications

• Simon, Mark, and Varvara Sklez. 2023. Migrant Artists and Precarious Labour in Contemporary Russian Theatre (chapter). In: Meerzon, Y., Wilmer, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan: 339-351.
• Simon, Mark, Nadezhda Kokoeva, and Yury Slinko. 2023. Russia’s nationalities policy and the country’s Central Asian residents’ identity-based activities. Dialectical Anthropology 47 (1): 109–121.
  
• Simon, Mark. Why Manizha’s 2021 Eurovision Entry Touched a Raw Nerve in Russia. ZOiS Spotlight 18/2021, May 12.
  
• Simon, Mark. 2020. Soviet in Form, National in Content: Central Asian Migrants in the Cultural Infrastructure of Moscow. The Journal of Social Policy Studies 18 (4): 737–750.
  
• Simon, Mark. 2020. Staging Urban Diversity: Migrants on Theatrical Stages in Berlin and Moscow. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research 12 (1): 15–47.
  
• Malakhov, Vladimir, and Mark Simon. 2018. Labour Migration Policy in Russia: Considerations on Governmentality. International Migration 56 (3): 61-72.
  
• Malakhov, Vladimir, and Mark Simon. 2017. Population and Migration (chapter) in Russia – Strategy, Policy and Administration, ed. by Irvin Studin, London: Palgrave: 257-268.