91ÅÝܽ

Olya Zikrata

Fonds de recherche du Québec Postdoctoral Fellow

E: olyana1@yahoo.ca

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 91ÅÝܽ, 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 91ÅÝܽ 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.

Olya’s past projects were supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and National Film Board of Canada, as well as venues like Winnipeg Art Gallery and Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal, among others. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Olya has been contributing to the cultural diplomacy project Club Ukrainien de Montréal, doing outreach and curatorial work.

RESEARCH AREAS

Sound and Music Studies, Sensory Studies, Warfare, Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian Colonialism, Terror Environment, Technologies and Epistemologies, Digital Archive

EDUCATION

PhD Interdisciplinary Humanities, Concordia University, 2023

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Zikrata, Olya. Forthcoming. “As for Now, It is Quiet: The Arts of Knowing in Wartime Ukraine.†In Matthew Unger (ed.) Transgressive Sounds and Atmospheres Research Network publication.

Zikrata, Olya. 2025. “Warbound: Collective Audio Streaming from Ukraine.†Journal of Sonic Studies 27

Zikrata, Olya. 2025. “Sonic Fictions in the Ruins of Catastrophe.†In Adrian Ivakhiv (ed.) Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth. McGill-Queen’s Press.

Zikrata, Olya. 2024. “Sound as Shield: Doing Ukrainian Self-Defense.†In Holger Schulze, Ania Mauruschat, Jenny Gräf Sheppard, and Giada Dalla Bontà (eds.), What Sounds Do: New Directions in an Anthropology of Sound. Special Issue. Seismograf Peer 6 January 2024.

Zikrata, Olya. 2023. “TO WHOM IT MAY SPEAK: Scenes of Ukrainian Truth, and Terror.†In Holger Schulze, Ania Mauruschat, Jenny Gräf Sheppard, and Giada Dalla Bontà (eds.), What Sounds Do: New Directions in an Anthropology of Sound. Special Issue. Seismograf Peer 11 December 2023.