Ada Wordsworth
I am a writer and researcher, and the co-founder and director of KHARPP, a UK registered charity repairing homes in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. You can find out more about KHARPP by visiting its website here. My ongoing PhD research, based at UCL SSEES and funded by the Lord Randolph Quirk Endowment, looks at houses of culture and other objects of Soviet-era cultural infrastructure in eastern Ukraine. I am currently on a placement at the Victoria and Albert Museum researching their Ukrainian collection and am the English language editor at SONIAKH, a Ukrainian cultural platform.My essays, features, and reviews have been published in the New York Review of Books, the LA Review of Books, the Telegraph, Granta, the LRB Blog, Apofenie, The Oldie, The Guardian, and others. I mostly write about Ukraine, in particular Kharkiv, and am especially interested in cultural preservation and reconstruction. I have given interviews to CNN, Monocle, CBC, and the Telegraph's Ukraine: the Latest podcast as well as providing comments to numerous other outlets, and have spoken on panels and individually at UCL, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Melbourne University, Dnipro Centre for Contemporary Culture, and the RUTA Conference.Prior to my PhD, I completed my MSt. in Slavonic Studies at the University of Oxford in 2023. My Masters thesis focussed on the language switch from Russian to Ukrainian of three Ukrainian authors and poets since 2014.I am available for commission for op-eds, essays and reviews, as well as for comment on issues surrounding Ukraine, Kharkiv, reconstruction, and cultural heritage.
Selected essays and features
'In Przemysl' - LRB Blog
'The Soundscape of War' - Granta
'Ukrainian Lessons at the Train Station' - New York Review of Books
'Slovo: More than a word' - Apofenie
'Love in a time of Putin' - 1843
'Uzbek Uncertainties' - New York Review of Books
'The villages near Kharkiv were recovering. Fleeing again, their people feel betrayed by the west – and I understand why' - The Guardian
'At Least We Die Dancing' - LRB Blog
Selected reviews
'The best Ukraine books of 2023, from histories to pictures of carnage' - The Telegraph
'Creating Art in the Face of War Crimes: On John Freedman’s “A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War”' - Los Angeles Review of Books
'Reading Livy in Lviv' - Literary Review