Kateryna Iakovlenko is a Luhansk-born and Kyiv-based visual art researcher, art critic and journalist. For six years she has been researching the transformation of the heroic narrative of Donbas through new media as a postgraduate thesis at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. She worked as deputy web editor for The Day newspaper (2013–14), curator and program manager in the Donbas Studies Research Project at Izolyatsia, a platform for cultural initiatives (2014–15), and researcher and curator of public programs at PinchukArtCentre (2016–22). Her current research interest touches on the subject of art during political transformations and war, and explores women’s and gender optics in visual culture.