Bohdana Kurylo is an LSE Fellow in Qualitative Methodology. She earned her PhD in International Relations and East European Studies from University College London, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, in 2024.

Bohdana's work resides at the nexus of International Relations theory, critical security studies, and research ethics, with a focus on the post-Soviet region. Her research revolves around three central themes. First, using a hermeneutic-contextualist methodology, Bohdana examines the interplay between different actors and security politics in various sociopolitical settings of Eastern Europe. Her doctoral thesis investigated the role of civil society as a security actor in the contexts of the abortion rights struggle in Poland and Ukraine’s resistance in the face of Russian aggression. Populist discourses and aesthetics of security constitute the second theme of Bohdana's research, where she employs discourse-analytical and visual research methods to examine the security imaginaries of different populist movements. The third strand of Bohdana's work centres on the feminist-decolonial ethics of qualitative research, which guide her appraisal of the politics of knowledge production in International Relations.

Prior to joining LSE, Bohdana was a Teaching Fellow in International Relations at Oxford Brookes University. She has also held teaching positions at University College London, Queen Mary University of London, and King's College London. 

Research Interests

International Relations; critical security studies; post-Soviet politics; qualitative methodology; hermeneutics; contextualism; politics of knowledge production; civil society; gender; populism.

Selected Publications

Gaufman, L. and Kurylo, B. (2024) Editorial: Ukraine in popular culture, Czech Journal of International Relations, 59(1), pp. 7-22.

Kurylo, B. (2023) The Ukrainian subject, hierarchies of knowledge production and the everyday: An autoethnographic narrative, Journal of International Relations and Development, 26(4), pp. 685-697.

Kurylo, B. (2022) Emergency: A vernacular contextual approach, International Studies Review, 24(3), pp. 1-23.

Kurylo, B. (2022) Counter-populist performances of (in)security: Feminist resistance in the face of right-wing populism in Poland, Review of International Studies, 48(2), pp. 262-281.

Kurylo, B. (2022) The discourse and aesthetics of populism as securitisation style, International Relations, 36(1), pp. 127-147.

Kurylo, B. (2020) Technologised consumer culture: The Adorno-Benjamin debate and the reverse side of politicisation, Journal of Consumer Culture, 20(4), pp. 619-636.

Kurylo, B. (2017) Pornography and power in Michel Foucault's thought, Journal of Political Power, 10(1), pp. 71-84.

Kurylo, B. (2016) Russia and Carl Schmitt: The hybridity of resistance in the globalised world, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 2(16096), pp. 1-9.