University of Toronto, Department of History
Visiting Fellow

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Duration of stay: May 2024

Lilia Topouzova is Assistant Professor of History and Creative Nonfiction at the University of Toronto where she is also Director of the Professional Writing and Communication Program. As a writer and a documentary filmmaker she explores the relationship between remembering and forgetting. Her academic expertise spans Eastern European communism, gender studies, and transitional justice, reflected in her contributions to journals like the American Historical Review, Gender & History, Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, Journal of Visual Literacy, and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice.

Topouzova has been awarded fellowships at ZZF in Germany (2013), Brown University in the US (2014), York University in Canada (2015), the Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University, Canada (2017), and at the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria (2022).

Topouzova is the writer of the documentary The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (2007), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and TIFF, and received more than twenty-five awards, including the Human Rights Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2007. Her other films include Noir (2011) and a documentary on immigration Saturnia (2012). The films have been reviewed in the NY Times, The Guardian, The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail, and Varsity. Currently, she is in production of her third film, Anaanaga: My Mother.

Lilia Topouzova's forthcoming book, "Reclaiming Memory: The History and Legacy of the Bulgarian Gulag," promises to enrich scholarly discourse in Bulgarian memory politcs. 

During her time in Regensburg, throughout May 2024, she will be associated with the ScienceCampus and our partners at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at UR. During her time in Regensburg, together with some colleagues from her collective behind the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, she will give a workshop on Interdisciplinary Collaboration among Scholars, Artists, Curators, and Cultural Agencies for Amplifying Scholarship in the Public Sphere on 6 May from 12:00-16:00 and a public talk on The Making of the Neighbours: The Artist Studio as a Transitory Archive or How to Visualize Silenced Histories? on 7 May at 18:00 in room H 26 (Vielberth building).