Articles by Natalia Mamonova

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About Natalia Mamonova

Natalia Mamonova is a senior researcher at the Institute for Rural and Regional Research (RURALIS) in Trondheim, Norway and the coordinator of the European team of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI Europe). Her current research is focused on the impact of the war in Ukraine on the Ukrainian and world’s food systems.

Natalia received her doctoral degree from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University, The Netherlands in 2016. Since then, she was a visiting researcher/lecturer at the University of Oxford, the New Europe College in Bucharest, and the University of Helsinki. She gives lectures and publishes articles (both academic and popular science) on the topics: food sovereignty and agrarian justice in the post-socialist countryside, rural social movements and everyday peasant resistance in Russia and Ukraine, the causes, consequences and cures of right-wing populism in rural Europe.

Natalia lives in Stockholm with her husband and their little daughter.

Latest from Brussels

Blame the System, Not the Farmers 

February 1, 2024 Natalia Mamonova

These ongoing farmer protests in Europe indicate that there is something fundamentally wrong with the European agricultural system. However, many journalists and politicians do not see the wood for the trees and link the protests to a specific policy or event. In this opinion piece, Natalia Mamonova discusses the farmer protests as indicators of the systemic crisis of the neoliberal agricultural model that has failed farmers and the planet. […]

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9 Key points on Ukrainian Agriculture in Wartime – Resilience, Reforms, & Markets

November 20, 2023 Natalia Mamonova

The Ukrainian government currently faces a major dilemma in agricultural development: to continue supporting large-scale export-oriented agriculture or refocus on family farming. A new report by Natalia Mamonova, Olena Borodina and Brian Kuns address this uneasy dilemma in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Here Mamonova provides a summary of the key points. […]

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Food Security, Food Sovereignty, and Collective Action During the War in Ukraine

September 25, 2023 Natalia Mamonova

The dramatic situation that the Ukranian people have been experiencing since February 2022 is well known. Less well reported is how agricultural production and farmers’ livelihoods have resisted and adapted since February 2022. This is a very important and timely interview related to power, food sovereignty, solidarity, and land. And for the latter, there are many considerations, from consolidation and access to grabbing and the future. Transcript of an interview with Natalia Mamonova. […]

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Alternatives to Rural Right-Wing Populist Europe

May 6, 2020 Natalia Mamonova

Populism has become a powerful political force in Europe. The current wave of populist movements has seeped through the European countryside from France to Sweden to Poland. Yet despite the emergence of resistance and alternatives to populism, the political debate continues to overlook rural Europe. In the first of a two-part series Natalia Mamonova shares her insights into why populism is having a moment in rural areas. […]

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Right-Wing Populism and Counter-Movements in Rural Europe

February 27, 2019 Natalia Mamonova

Right-wing populism has gained high levels of support among rural population in Europe. How could this happen and what are the solutions? Natalia Mamonova, of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative, explains the causes of populism in the European countryside and shares some ideas on potential resistance and the building of alternatives to the regressive nationalist politics. […]

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Patriotism, Food Sovereignty & Contemporary Ukraine

February 25, 2018 Natalia Mamonova

Over the last few years, Ukraine went through dramatic political, socio-economic and cultural changes. Dr. Natalia Mamonova investigates how the rising Ukrainian national identity and patriotic sentiments during the geopolitical conflict with Russia changed the ways in which Ukrainian smallholders see their household farming. The revealed transformation may lead to an emergence of a food sovereignty movement in Ukraine. […]