Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award in the Social Sciences
Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award in the Social Sciences
Elynna Volkova
Radical Inheritance: Political Memory and Identity in Modern American Far-Left Families
View Elynna’s project online
I interviewed eight American adults raised by parents who held radical left beliefs—beliefs that fundamentally oppose institutions as they exist now. I was interested in how these adults experienced radical politics in an environment where political memory and meanings are hotly contested, both publicly and privately. The recollections of these interviewees reveal how political narratives of both the world and the self orient individuals towards politics as a source of meaning-making.
What is your major and expected year of graduation?
I am a public health major expecting to graduate in May 2026.
What inspired you to pursue your project?
The unique choice of study population comes from my own experience as a child of a Marxist-Leninist and a libertarian. This arrangement made me interested in politics as something that lives in our closest relationships and shapes our thinking and moods the same way other pieces of personal history can. Most of all, I was interested in the experience of being raised with conflicting political influences from family, school, and other institutions, an experience which has enormously shaped the way I understand the world.
How did the Libraries support your research?
I drew from several disciplines for my literature review, and the Libraries facilitated access to much of the literature I needed, including some print books (great for annotating!). Access to Sage Research Methods helped me immensely in learning conventions for anthropological research, which are quite different from those familiar to me in qualitative health research. I am very grateful for the Libraries; no research is possible without access to previous knowledge.
Elynna Volkova’s research project “Radical Inheritance: Political Memory and Identity in Modern American Far-Left Families” is a sophisticated and important investigation of political socialization. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in social sciences, Elynna conducted original interview-based research to explore political subjectivities of adult children of Far-Left parents. Combining insights from political science, anthropology, sociology, and history, Elynna examined the effects of early socialization on the formation of affect, moral orientations, engagement with social media, and individual understandings of history. Elynna’s research skills are at the level of a graduate student, and her diligence, dedication to research, and creativity resulted in an original, important, and innovative paper. Elynna’s paper is an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on socialization, radicalization, and on-going political subject-making.
-Marina Mikhaylova, Associate Professor of Instruction, Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts
This category covers research methods in the social sciences. Disciplines represented include such fields as Anthropology, Business, Communication Studies, Economics, Education, Geography and Urban Studies, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. Social sciences often include qualitative or quantitative research methods similar to those used by the "hard" sciences but may also involve more traditional library research in the form of a literature review.
This award is generously sponsored by John H. Livingstone, SBM ’49.