Olya Zikrata is an artist-researcher working at the interstices of sound studies, communication and media technologies, and listening activism. She is a Fonds de recherche du Québec Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, where she leads the project Sonic Knowledges of the Invasion: An Inquiry into the Ukrainian War Experience. The project explores the ecology of situated sonic knowledges as both a record of violence and a justice-seeking intervention. It foregrounds war as a sonic encounter, tracing the circulation of harm across terror environments and sensing bodies.

Olya is a member of Media, Infrastructure, Environment working group at Simon Fraser University and Transgressive Sounds and Atmospheres Research Network at Concordia University. She is also a Senior Fellow at Concordia’s Center for Sensory Studies. For her current project, she builds on collaborative work with Ukrainian curators, practitioners, and institutions, including Home of Sound (Dim  Zvuku) in Lviv.

During her short-term residency at the Center for Urban History, Olya will use every opportunity to connect with Ukrainian colleagues and institutions involved in studying and documenting Russia’s war in Ukraine. She will also have an Urban seminar on the epistemological significance of sonic witnessing, especially in the context of broader documentation efforts and knowledge-making practices through which Ukrainians have been articulating their lived experiences of war and terror and their pursuit of justice.