Iuliia Gataulina

Iuliia Gataulina is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on two main directions: 1) the ontological politics of global extractivism and extraction capitalism, and 2) the workings of extractive capitalism in the Global East and postsocialist spaces, as well as struggles and imaginaries for fairer alternatives. 

In January 2024, Gataulina defended her PhD, which resulted in the book Neoliberal Authoritarianism: An Ethnography of Russian Universities, published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2025. Her current work centers on her postdoctoral project Pluriversal Waters: Tracing Hydro-Ontologies Across Colonial-Extractivist Assemblages.

Gataulina combines academic and artistic practices: she has collaborated for several years with visual artist and illustrator Natalia Batrakova and also uses photography as a medium. These collaborations have led to an artistic residency in Outokumpu, Finland, and the exhibition Frontiers and Temporalities of Extractivism, with further exhibitions currently planned.

She has taught courses such as "Political Ecologies of the Global East: State, Capital, Resources" and "Political Economies of the Global East", both designed by her and offered at bachelor’s and master’s levels with invited guest lecturers. Other courses include International Political Economy (bachelor’s level) and International Relations Reading Group (doctoral level). In 2019–2020, Gataulina worked as Academic Coordinator for the Leadership for Change Master’s Programme at the Faculty of Management and Business.

She earned her Master’s degrees from St. Petersburg State University and Tampere University through a double-degree program in 2017. Her Master’s thesis, Translating Gender Equality: Nordic Initiatives in the Russian Context, laid the foundation for her research interests in critiques of Eurocentrism, policy mobilities, and the Russia/West geopolitical divide. Between 2015 and 2019, Gataulina was actively involved in LGBTIQ+ and feminist movements in St. Petersburg.

2023 – ongoing. Board member of Tampereen yliopiston tieteentekijä (Tampere University Association of Researchers and Teachers).

International political economy, political ecology, workings of global capitalism and neoliberalism in the Global East, extractivisms, ethnographic methods, collaboration between research and art.

Gataulina, I. (2025). Neoliberal Authoritarianism. An ethnography of Russian universities. Palgrave McMillan.

Kangas, A., Gataulina, I., Poutanen, M., Rajala, A., & Ventovirta, H.E. (eds) (2025). Retheorizing Capitalism. Tampere University Press.

Gataulina, I. (2025). Political materialities of status-making and unmaking: Universities in the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg. Baltic Worlds, 2025(1), 98—108.

Gataulina, I. (2025). The rise of mining in Finland. Alusta! Available at: https://blogs.tuni.fi/alustalehti/2025/05/26/the-rise-of-mining-in-finland/

Gataulina, I. & Shahmoradi, M. (2024, May 7). Interconnectedness of Political Struggle: Iranian-Russian Political Resistance in Conversation. LeftEast. Available at https://lefteast.org/iranian-russian-political-resistance-in-conversation/