Emilia Koustova is a Professor in Russian and Soviet Studies at Strasbourg University, a Fellow at GEO (Strasbourg University) and an Associate Fellow at CERCEC (CNRS/EHESS, Paris). She graduated from Faculty of History of Moscow State Lomonossov University and from Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and received a PhD from Advanced School of Historical Studies of San-Marino.
Her first research dealt with the political rituals of the Russian revolution, its commemorative culture and historical memory in the USSR (Le spectacle de la Révolution. La culture visuelle des commémorations d’Octobre, Lausanne, 2017, co-editor; Combattre, survivre, témoigner: expériences soviétiques de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Strasbourg, 2020, editor). She then extended this research by looking at the politics of history in contemporary Russia and contemporary Russia. She currently works on the history of the coercive Sovietization and repressions conducted in the countries annexed after 1939. She authored several publications on this topic, in particular: Déportés pour l’éternité. Survivre à l’exil stalinien (1939-1991), 2024, with Alain Blum; “(Un)Returned from the Gulag : Life Trajectories and Integration of Postwar Special Settlers”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 16, 3 (2015); “Constructing Guilt and Tracking the Enemy: The Hunt for ‘State Criminals’ in Soviet Lithuania, 1944-1953”, in The Secret Police and the Soviet System: New Archival Investigations, ed. by M. David-Fox, 2023.