Professor Vlad Strukov
- Position: Professor
- Areas of expertise: Film and Visual Cultures; Contemporary Art & Curating; Art Institutions; Queer Visual Cultures; Muslim Visual Cultures; Streaming Media; Globalisation and Globalities; Modernities and Post-Empires
- Email: V.Strukov@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 3294
- Location: 204 M. Sadler
Profile
My work is across three interconnected areas.
First, I work on visual cultures in global settings, focusing on arts and cinemas since the 1980s. My work is both theoretical and practice-led, including staging exhibitions and film screenings such as those in Leeds, London, Moscow, New York, Paris, Saint Petersburg, Sao Paulo and Venice, and a decade long experience of serving as curator of research in a major museum of contemporary art. I am the founding and contributing editor of a journal on contemporary arts, museums and cultures (since 2017). I also critically investigate how institutions shape and sustain visual cultures, including institutional forms of governance, exhibition policy and research. Cases that I have worked on encompass art biennales and museums in Azerbaijan, Brazil, Colombia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Morrocco, the Russian Federation, Spain, Thailand, Türkiye, the UK and Uzbekistan.
Second, I am interested in theories of globalisation, myself developing the conceptual framework of multiple globalities and non-hegemonic forms of thinking about the world. Relevant publications include volumes on popular geopolitics; memory and securitization; and visual cultures in the age of globalisation. My most recent research has been on (1) meta-national formations, for example, a volume on streaming and film; and (2) in/visible connections underpinning the modern world, for example, an article on geopolitical scotoma and a project on Muslim minority cultures in South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. My work in this area is linked closely to that on visual cultures since in both instances I approach issues of global knowledge production through the framework of visibility. For example, my volume on Arctic visual cultures offers a circumpolar critique of Euro-centric visual epistemologies.
Third, I examine how visual cultures produce and sustain knowledge about contextually- and culturally-formed categories of gender and sexuality, paying special attention to queer visual cultures in global contexts. In my publications and engagement activities, I argue that these forms of knowledge are always geo-political (see, for instance, the ‘Weaponizing prejudice: Russia’s anti-LGBTQI+ foreign policy’ panel I organised at at Chatham House, London). I am particularly interested in how gender and sexuality emerge as a type of globality and how they intersect with religion, spiritual practices and non-hegemonic beliefs. Relevant publications include articles on contemporary Thai Muslim queer art and queer cinema out of the Muslim-majority Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in the North Caucasus. In 2025, I founded a research centre—the Leeds Centre for Global Queer Cultures and Politics—that I co-direct with Professor Helen Finch.
A major project that exemplifies my work across these three fields is ‘Transitions: Examining Changing Regimes of Sexuality in Post-Soviet Muslim Republics’. It is an international research project (2025-2028), funded by British and German research councils, AHRC and DFG, and brining together researchers from the Universities of Leeds and Regensburg. I am the Principal Investigator on this project.
My research and public engagement have resulted in over eighty media appearances across legacy outlets such as Al Jazeera, American Public Radio and the BBC.
Theories and approaches that underpin my work encompass (A) deconstruction and post-deconstruction, including theories of epistemic justice and healing (Gloria Anzaldúa; bell hooks; Judith Butler; María Lugones); (B) theories of modernity and contemporaneity (Frederic Jameson; Okwui Enwezor; Yuk Hui; Kwasi Wiredu); and (C) theories of multiplicity (Alain Badiou; Mikhail Bakhtin; Ylya Prigozhine).
In particular, I am fascinated by the figure of Jaque Derrida. I see him as many things / inspirations: first, as a philosopher who revealed how meaning is shaped by difference, absence and continual reinterpretation; and second, as an educator who remained open to ethics, politics and memory. In recent years, I have been interested in understanding his engagement with Sufism, his experiences of exile and belonging, and also in how him being a celebrity in the 1990s has shaped present-day academia.
In terms of the ways of working, I am deeply committed to collaborative forms of work, especially those that support early-career researchers, sustain opportunities for those who identify as women and as queer, and foster more inclusive and sustainable research cultures. This has been evidenced in several projects, for example, research projects and exhibitions that examine women’s histories, experiences and visibilities. It is my career-long objective to include in all my volumes contributions authored by independent researchers and researchers based in contexts with a more limited access to research facilities.
In recent years, these practices have led to a formulation of my approach which is about developing and implementing inclusive and non-extractivist frameworks, both at Leeds and internationally. These translate into development and implementation of institutional policies that enhance trust and accountability by advancing transparency and peer-to-peer deliberation. For example, I have done research and published policy papers that re-shape the ways in which mentoring is used across institutions in both academic and non-academic settings.
In terms of leadership, I have served in different roles, most recently as the School’s Chair in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (2022-2026). Highlights of my tenure include development of modules that embed EDI as a learning outcome and a university-wide event featuring a presentation by California-based editor and director of inclusion and diversity strategy at a major streaming service, Zulema Uriarte. I previously had Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Copenhagen (Denmark), Helsinki and Tampere (Finland), Konstanz (Germany) and Pittsburgh (USA). I am Visiting Professor in Contemporary Art and Curating at Ca-Foscari University, Venice (Italy) (2020-present).
In terms of teaching, I regularly contribute to BA & MA modules:
MODL2003 Global Queer Politics and Cultures
FILM3055 Current Enquiries into Film Studies
FILM3050 Queer Films on Global Screens
FILM5230 Cinema in the Digital Era
Postgraduate supervision
I welcome approaches from students interested in researching the following areas and issues:
Art; Contemporary Art; Art Institutions and Museums; Curating
Visual Cultures; Film Cultures; Queer Cultures; Digital Cultures; Streaming Cultures
Globality; Global Contexts; Global East and Global South; Meta-national; (Post-)Imperialism
Gender; Religion; Religion and ‘Cultural Identity’; ‘(Anti-)national’; Popular Geopolitics
Theories of (In)visibility; Resistances; Minoritised Cultures; Non-Extractivist Approaches; Multiplicity and Collaboration
Representative postgraduate projects supervised:
‘POV: You Live in Eastern Europe' - Playful 'Slavicness' Across Digital Cultures’ (ongoing)
‘A New Temporal Construction in Global Cinema and Interactive Media: The Posthuman Condition and Negative Time’ (ongoing)
‘Gender, Space, and Film Practice in New Saudi Women’s Cinema’ (PhD; ongoing)
Structures of Imagination in Contemporary Chinese Animation (PhD; ongoing)
‘The impact of exile: Using non-representational methodologies to examine displaced contemporary queer visual art practices between 2020-2024 in the UK (PhD; ongoing)
‘The Refugee Crisis in Contemporary European Film: Europeanness, Curatorial Spaces and Relational Aesthetics’ (PhD; ongoing)
‘Constructing ‘Legitimacy’: A Multimodal Case Study of Bhikkhuni Communities in Thailand’ (PhD; awarded)
‘Combi-nation: Thai Nation Building and National Identity in Thai TV Dramas with Northern Thai Focus (PhD; awarded)
‘A Documentary Like No Other? Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, Embodied Knowledge & The Art of Non-Fiction Film (PhD; awarded)
‘The ‘School for Laughter’: Visual Satire, Transmediality, and Performativity in Krokodil’ (PhD; awarded)