Oksana Potapova

Oksana Potapova

Guest Speaker

Graduate Student, London School of Economics

Born and raised in the east of Ukraine, Oksana has been involved in addressing the aftermath of the conflict in Donbas since 2014. In 2015 Oksana co-founded "Theatre for Dialogue" NGO and women’s initiative “One of Us,” where she used community theatre and feminist pedagogy to build dialogue and cohesion and to advocate the rights of internally displaced and other marginalized groups of women at the national and international level. This experience led to her interest in embodied feminist methodologies and the advocacy of the intersectional Women, Peace, and Security/WPS agenda. Oksana combines activism with research and advocacy for feminist peace and grassroots movement building in Ukraine. In September 2021, she completed with distinction a Master’s program in Gender, Peace, and Security at the London School of Economics. Her master’s thesis focused on embodied arts-based practices as decolonial methodologies for knowledge production about peace and security. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Oksana has continued her research, advocacy, and activism, focusing on highlighting the intersectional gendered impacts of this war, challenging old and building new solidarities around new realities of peace and security in Ukraine and the region; and exploring existing frameworks of antimilitarist feminism through an embodied positionality as a Ukrainian activist and scholar.