Biography
PhD candidate and Casual Academic in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, researching intergenerational trauma transmission.
Anna Denejkina is a writer, and PhD Candidate with the University of Technology Sydney. She has a Master’s degree in journalism from UTS.
Her doctoral research examines familial relationships pertaining to returned Soviet veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979 to ’89: a mixed method (quantitative and multi-method qualitative) study into the intergenerational transmission of combat-related trauma from parent to child.
Professional
Professional Memberships:
- International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
- The Australian Sociological Association
- Ukraine Democracy Initiative (Associate Member profile: http://ukrainedemocracy.org/?network=anna-denejkina)
- Forum: Qualitative Social Research/Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung (external reviewer)
- PEN Sydney
Scholarships:
- Research Training Program award, formerly the Australian Postgraduate Award
- UTS Research Excellence Scholarship
Research Interests
Current research focuses on combat-related trauma transmission from parent to child, and familial relationships — both pertaining to returned Soviet veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979 to ’89.
Intergenerational trauma transmission;
Epigenetic trauma transmission;
Mixed method, and multi-method research;
Ethnography, and alternative ethnographies (autoethnography and exo-autoethnography);
Trauma writing;
Ethics in research.
Publications
Denejkina, A 2018, 'Ethics of de-identification: Exploring issues of erasure, safety, and agency', Nexus: Newsletter of the Australian Sociological Association, vol. 30, no. 1.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2018, 'Trauma, shame, and secret making: Being a family without a narrative', Ethical Space: the international journal of communication ethics, vol. 15, no. 3/4, pp. 98-100.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2017, 'Exo-Autoethnography: An Introduction', Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 18, no. 3.View/Download from: UTS OPUS or Publisher's site
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Exo-autoethnography is the autoethnographic exploration of a history whose events the researcher does not experience directly, but a history that impacts the researcher through familial, or other personal connections, by proxy. It is an approach to research and autoethnographic writing that seeks to analyze individual and private experience, as directed by the other's experience or history, to better understand: a history that affects the researcher indirectly; and personal and community experience as it relates to that history.
The method of exo-autoethnographic research and writing has been developed for the qualitative study into transgenerational transmission of trauma, moving beyond the personal experience of the researcher. In this first and preliminary conception, the method aims to connect the present with a history of the other through transgenerational transmission of trauma and/or experiences of an upbringing influenced by parental trauma.
Denejkina, A 2017, 'The art of memoir', Ethical Space: the international journal of communication ethics, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 44-44.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2016, 'Exo-Autoethnography: writing and research on transgenerational transmission of trauma', Authorised Theft: Writing, Scholarship, Collaboration Papers – The Refereed Proceedings Of The 21st Conference Of The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, 2016, Canberra AUS, Authorised Theft: 21st Annual Australasian Association of Writing Programs, The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, University of Canberra, pp. 1-10.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
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Since the late 1970s, autoethnographic research and writing has demonstrated that non-fiction creative writing practice can utilise this alternate-ethnographic method as part of its research and narrative, producing rigorous creative work which is palatable both by the academy and the general audience: bringing social science closer to literature. This paper proposes a new autoethnographic method of research and writing I am calling exo-autoethnography: a distinct ethnographic method of qualitative research within non-fiction creative, and autoethnographic writing, that deals with transgenerational transmission of familial trauma. Exo- autoethnography is an approach to research that seeks to analyse individual and private experience as directed by the other's experience or history to better understand: 1. A history that impacted the researcher by proxy; and 2. Personal and community experience as related to that history. Exo-autoethnography is the autoethnographic exploration of a history whose events the researcher (author) did not experience directly, but a history that impacted the researcher through familial, or other personal connections. Placing focus on a history that impacted the self (author) by proxy, the method aims to connect the present with a history of the other through transgenerational transmission of trauma and/or experiences of an upbringing influenced by parental trauma.
Denejkina, A. 2015, 'Autoethnography and the journalist: an ethical comparison', Writing the Ghost Train: Rewriting, Remaking, Rediscovering Papers – The Refereed Proceedings Of The 20th Conference Of The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, Writing the Ghost Train: The 20th Conference Of The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
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Autoethnography has undergone numerous critical appraisals based on its specific ways of truth reproduction. This paper looks at autoethnography as method and text from an ethical journalistic perspective, utilising it as a method for the production of written artefacts, and its interpretation and reinterpretation of past events. The research identifies the ethical issues and dilemmas of allowing composite events and reproduction of conversations to enter autoethnography in its work, both as method and as text. Particularly, the paper questions when the message or main tenet of the text overshadows the balance and truth experienced by the author in a corporeal, rather than a metaphysical sense. The paper reviews three autoethnographic texts, comparing current methodologies to journalistic output. It also discusses issues of implementing autoethnography in producing factual reconstructions of events. This research challenges autoethnography's use of composite events and reproductions of dialogue without recorded evidence in order to produce a text more reliant on ideology and meaning. Using a journalistic lens, ethical issues arising from this method are discussed in conjunction with a discussion of balance and truth, paying attention to fictitious accounts of factual events, and adjudicating autoethnography under the principles of journalistic ethics.
Denejkina, A 2015, 'Autoethnography and the journalist: an ethical comparison', Writing the Ghost Train: Rewriting, Remaking, Rediscovering Papers – The Refereed Proceedings Of The 20th Conference Of The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, Writing the Ghost Train: The 20th Conference Of The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
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Autoethnography has undergone numerous critical appraisals based on its specific ways of truth reproduction. This paper looks at autoethnography as method and text from an ethical journalistic perspective, utilising it as a method for the production of written artefacts, and its interpretation and reinterpretation of past events. The research identifies the ethical issues and dilemmas of allowing composite events and reproduction of conversations to enter autoethnography in its work, both as method and as text. Particularly, the paper questions when the message or main tenet of the text overshadows the balance and truth experienced by the author in a corporeal, rather than a metaphysical sense. The paper reviews three autoethnographic texts, comparing current methodologies to journalistic output. It also discusses issues of implementing autoethnography in producing factual reconstructions of events. This research challenges autoethnography's use of composite events and reproductions of dialogue without recorded evidence in order to produce a text more reliant on ideology and meaning. Using a journalistic lens, ethical issues arising from this method are discussed in conjunction with a discussion of balance and truth, paying attention to fictitious accounts of factual events, and adjudicating autoethnography under the principles of journalistic ethics.
Denejkina, A 2016, 'Exo-Autoethnography and the Trauma Narrative', Great Writing: The International Creative Writing Conference 2016, Imperial College London, UK.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
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Since the late 1970s, autoethnographic research and writing has progressively demonstrated that non-fiction creative writing practice can aptly utilise this alternate-ethnographic method as part of its research and narrative, producing rigorous creative work which is palatable both by the academy and the general audience: bringing a social science closer to literature. This paper proposes the use of the methodological model I am calling exo-autoethnography as a form of qualitative research within non-fiction creative writing, and autoethnographic writing, that deals with the inter-familial trauma narrative.
Exo-autoethnography is the autoethnographic exploration of a history whose events the researcher or author did not experience directly, but a history that impacted the researcher or author through familial, or other personal connections.
This paper will interrogate the notion of exo-autoethnography as a distinct method informing qualitative research, for the purpose of deeply and rigorously exploring inter-familial trauma through generations. This practice is utilised in order to produce a creative non-fiction and autoethnographic narrative that is accessible as both memoir, and research text (autoethnography) to better understand sole, and cultural experience.
Denejkina, A 2018, 'Golden Brown', FIVE:2:ONE, FIVE:2:ONE, Los Angeles, CA.
Denejkina, A 2018, 'In Russia, Feminist Memes Buy Jail Time, but Domestic Abuse Doesn't', Foreign Policy, The FP Group, Washington, D.C..View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2018, 'In Russia, feminist memes can land people in jail. But beating women won't', Business Insider, Insider Inc., UK.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2018, 'Stop centring Western academic ethics: deidentification in social science research', Research Ethics Monthly, Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services, Australia.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2017, 'Find the Woods', Meniscus, Australasian Association of Writing Programs, Australia, pp. 54-55.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2017, 'He Lives with a Mountainous View from the Window', Meniscus, Australasian Association of Writing Programs, Australia, pp. 52-52.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2017, 'Irina', Meniscus, Australasian Association of Writing Programs, Australia, pp. 53-53.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2017, 'The Apartment', FIVE:2:ONE, FIVE:2:ONE, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 106-110.
Denejkina, A 2017, 'The Apartment', Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI, pp. 310-312.View/Download from: Publisher's site
Denejkina, A 2016, 'The promise and peril of DIY electrical brain stimulation', The Kernel, The Daily Dot, New York.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A 2015, 'Down on the Body Farm: Australia's First Taphonomic Research Facility', Popular Science, Next Media, Sydney, Australia, pp. 64-69.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
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Yarramundi is 70 kilometres from Sydney's city center; it feels like a whole new world as the skyscrapers shrink and disappear in the rear-view mirror, and suburbia's manicured lawns and rows of homes morph into wide, open paddocks, green fields, and farm houses.
It's eight am on a cold Saturday morning; in big, red letters, a sign reads Cover Your Load, as I drive past a waste management plant.
Turning right onto Springwood Road, the Blue Mountains of New South Wales stand at the horizon, splitting the sky and the green fields below them. And as you cross the little bridge hovering over the Nepean River, the flat fields soon begin to melt into the trees and bush interrupted only by the sparse darting of country homes and their long, dusty driveways.
As an off-road trail begins mirroring Springwood Road, riding parallel to its rough asphalt, an idle convention centre starts creeping in on the left, hugging a bend in the road, the same right bend that peripheries the site of Australia's first taphonomic research facility, colloquially known as a Body Farm.
Denejkina, A 2015, 'The Body is Obsolete: Stelarc's Radical Experiments with Alternate Human Forms', The Kernel, The Daily Dot, New York.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
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Since the '70s, transhumanist artist Stelarc has used himself as an experimental canvas for exploring his ideas about the body's obsolescence and its potential for technological alteration. The Perth, Australia-based artist has investigated, amplified, and internally examined his body to view how far it can be pushed with the use of technology, and how much further we can take its operation and its capabilities.
Denejkina, A 2015, 'Transhumanist Hacking', Vertigo Magazine, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, pp. 12-13.
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1998, Julian Dibbell publishes the now classic essay, 'A Rape in Cyberspace', dealing with text-based rape in the mid-nineties. But unlike this world of LambdaMOO (a genus of Multi-User-Dimensions), and unlike the text-based assault of Mr. Bungle (a character swathed in 'cum-stained harlequin garb' (Dibbell, 1998)) and his voodoo doll, forcing a slew of acts debauched, decadent and depraved on other residents of the digital-code world of LambdaMoo, contemporary developments in technology, specifically those of haptic, or kinesthetic technology, and smart adult toys enjoying wireless, WiFi functionality, raise the prospect of virtual rape now morphing into one of a physical sensation, and of physical damage.
Denejkina, A 2015, 'Viral artist Jesse Willesee wants to legalize marijuana—and become the next Andy Warhol', The Kernel, The Daily Dot, New York.View/Download from: UTS OPUS
Denejkina, A, 'Photographic portfolio', Untitled, National Art School, Sydney.
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Exhibition of photographic (black and white film) portfolio.
Denejkina, A, 'Void', Art Express, Art Gallery of New South Wales.
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Expressive form: photography.