publications

books

Karas, Abigail. 2026. On Top of the City: Youth Culture and Urban Resistance on the Rooftops of St Petersburg. Bloomsbury Press. | https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/on-top-of-the-city-9781350512870/

articles

Karas, Abigail. ‘Colonial Urban Visions? Alexei Şciusev and The Planning of Soviet Chișinău’. Slavic Review. Accepted, forthcoming.

Donovan, Victoria, Abigail Karas and Vlada Vazheyevskyy, ‘On Toxic Opportunities and Institutional Walls, or Critically engaging established “Area Studies” paradigms from within’. Baltic Worlds. Accepted, forthcoming.

Karas, Abigail, Maja Babic, Jovana Janinović, Carmen Popescu, Ana Miljacki, Jasna Galjer, Maryia Rusak and Jovanka Popova Unkovska. ‘ACTIVISM! The political dimension of heritage in the post-communist world’. Architectural Histories. Accepted, forthcoming.

Karas, Abigail. 2026. ‘Skateboarding as Imperial Endeavour: A Response to “The Ludic Lives of Memoryscapes”’. Memory Studies. Online First. | https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980251409280

Karas, Abigail. 2025. ‘“Grey Is All That Is Depressing and Dull”: The Chromatic Landscapes of Rooftop Exploration in St Petersburg and the “Grey Spaces” of Leisure in the Capitalocene’. Leisure Studies 44 (5). pp.812–25. | http://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2025.2481572

Karas, Abigail. 2024. ‘Rooftop Exploration and the Creation of Alternative Spaces in St Petersburg’. Problems of Post-Communism. pp.1–13. | http://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2024.2345349

Karas, Abigail. 2022. ‘Mansardization: Attic Space, Urban Development and the Politics of Preservation in St Petersburg’. Slavonic and East European Review 100 (1). pp.127–56. | http://doi.org/10.1353/see.2022.0004

winner of the 2022 SHERA Emerging Scholar Prize

chapters

Karas, Abigail. 2026. ‘Cafeneaua Guguţă: Heritage and Civic Activism in Chișinău’. In Contentious Spaces: Uncovering the Hidden Narratives of State-Socialist Built Heritage, edited by Maja Babić and Tino Mager. Leuven University Press. pp.175–92. | http://doi.org/10.11116/9789461667212

Karas, Abigail. 2022. ‘“Hanging Out” with the Boys The Female Participant Observer in a Male-Dominated Group’. In Researching in the Former Soviet Union: Stories from the Field, edited by Jasmin Dall’Agnola, Allyson Edwards, and Marnie Howlett. Routledge. pp.73–90. | http://doi.org/10.4324/9781003144168-7

Adelfinsky, Andrey, Julia Buchatskaja, Victoria Donovan, Abigail Karas, Catriona Kelly, Anna Lazareva, Ji Eun Lee, Daria Litvina, Alexandra Piir, Anna Temkina et al. 2022. ‘Форум 52: Социальные науки и COVID-19: pro etcontra. [Forum 52: The Humanities and Social Sciences and Covid-19: Pros and Cons]’. Антропологический форум [Forum for Anthropology and Culture], 52. pp.11–82. | http://doi.org/10.31250/1815-8870-2022-18-52-11-82

reviews

Karas, Abigail. 2025. ‘Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States. Alexis Lerner. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025, 237 pp.’ City & Society 37 (3). | http://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.70021

Karas, Abigail. 2023. ‘Anthropology of Transformation. From Europe to Asia and Back’. Europe-Asia Studies 75 (10). pp.1798–99. | http://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2023.2282322

Karas, Abigail. 2021. ‘LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Resistance, Representation and Identity’. Europe-Asia Studies 73 (3). pp.590–92. | http://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2021.1893535

other writing

Karas, Abigail. 2022. ‘Border Support in Przemyśl’. Hot Potato Magazine 4. pp.66-67. Print Only.

Karas, Abigail. 2021. ‘Yav: the street art collective running out of patience in the fight for social change’. The Calvert Journal (preserved as the New East Digital Archive since 2022). | https://www.new-east-archive.org/articles/show/12507/yav-street-art-collective-social-change-russia-protests