Ekaterina Rybkina

Ekaterina Rybkina is a project researcher at the Department of Historical and Contemporary Studies. Her current research project, “Wired Empire: Telegraph and Techno-Diplomacy in the Caucasus, 1850s–1917,” funded by Östersjöstiftelsen (the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies) for the period 2025–2028, examines the history of telegraph construction in the Tsarist Caucasus in the nineteenth century. It focuses on one of the most ambitious engineering undertakings of its time—the Indo-European Telegraph, implemented by the Siemens Company to connect Britain and India through the Caucasus and Iran. By exploring the processes of constructing and maintaining this transimperial telegraph infrastructure, the study reveals how political and economic competitors acted as a network in their own right—collaborating to achieve a common goal while simultaneously competing to maximize their gains. The project also elucidates the Siemens Company’s role as an imperial intermediary, mediating and negotiating among state actors that otherwise stood as rivals on the international stage. Wired Empire seeks to deepen our understanding of large-scale transnational processes of techno-diplomacy in information and communication technologies from a local perspective.

Ekaterina holds a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute (2020). Her doctoral dissertation, “Playing with Radio Waves: Radio Amateurs in Russia, 1920-1930s,” explored the history of radio communication in early Soviet Russia, focusing on how amateur enthusiasts built and used homemade radio devices. It examined civic radio experiments as alternative practices of technological and scientific engagement, revealing how individual initiative and state interest became closely intertwined through the “taming” radio waves.

Before joining Södertörn University, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg, where she also participated in various projects as a researcher and administrator. Ekaterina has taught a range of courses on the history of technology and communications, Russian and Soviet history, and gender studies. Her research interests include the history of telecommunications, the history of science and technology, and Russian history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has also been an invited lecturer at Sciences Po Lyon, where she taught a course on the history of technology in the Soviet Union.

Ekaterina has been a visiting researcher at several international institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, the IEEE History Centre (NJ, USA), and the German Historical Institute London.