LefteastWladimir Sgibnev is senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Regional Geography (IfL), where he is coordinating the research group on Mobilities and Migration and leading the Leibniz Junior Research Group "Contentious Mobilities through a decolonial lens". Recent research projects addressed survival strategies in peripheral mining cities, informal mobilities, and a reconceptualization of public transport as public space, as well as insights into the effects of the pandemic on public transport usage and atmospheres.
Lela Rekhviashvili is a post-doctoral researcher at Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig. Her research interests include the political economy of transition, informal economic practices, social movements, everyday resistance, and urban mobility. Her academic publications discuss post-soviet shared taxies in a comparative perspective with ride-sharing and informal transport, the role of everyday resistance in production of public space, and the impact of institutional change, particularly of marketization policies on informal economic practices.
Note from editors: This text is a contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s BLACK BOX EAST text series; its German translation is available here on Berliner Gazette. You can find more texts, works, and conference information on the English-language BLACK BOX EAST website. Infrastructures serve as basis for developmental discourses, preconfigure our ideas, and literally build futures because of their decades-long lifespans. Debates on […]