Anatoli Ulyanov is a linguistic anthropologist, semiotician, and documentary filmmaker. His work examines propaganda, hate speech, and the semiotic production of enemies and violence across language, sound, images, and digital media. He combines data analysis with close interpretive scholarship, using computational instruments of his own design. Before joining academia, he worked in media and visual storytelling, serving as Head of Media at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center and Team Lead for the multilingual analysis of antisemitism, extremism, and harmful content in a Google/YouTube AI content-safety project. He collaborates with the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the California Civil Rights Department on hate-crime prevention, public engagement, and policy interventions.
EDUCATION

2026 — Ph.D. in Anthropology (in progress), Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles / Los Angeles, CA

2026 — M.A. in Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles / Los Angeles, CA

2006 — M.A. in Journalism, Taras Shevchenko National University / Kyiv, Ukraine.

2005 — B.A. in Journalism, Taras Shevchenko National University / Kyiv, Ukraine.
Fellowships and Awards

Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship (2024, 2028)
UCLA Initiative to Study Hate — Research Innovation Fund (2025)
Carolyn Lew-Karon & Michael Karon / Keck Digital Research Fellowship (2026)
Blavatnik Archive Spring Fellowship (2026)
Bluma Appel Research Grant (2025)
Harry and Yvonne Lenart Fellowship (2025)
CERS Research Fellowship (2025, 2026)
CERS Conference Grant (2025)
ASEEES Convention Grant (2025)
UCLA GSRM (2025, 2026)
UCLA GRM (2025—26)
Research Interests

Semiotics of Conflict and Violence: How language, image, and discourse construct enemies and make harm possible — through dehumanization, stigmatization, and the circulation of hate across media, propaganda, and everyday speech.

Computational Semiotics: Software, corpora, and data visualization systems built for the analysis of meaning at scale — mixed-methods design in which close interpretive reading and computational pattern detection do the work together. Extends to AI-mediated communication: how machine agents produce, filter, and reshape meaning, and what remains human in an increasingly agential exchange.

Visual and Ethnographic Methods: Documentary film as a mode of inquiry and as public scholarship; multimodal ethnography, community-based media production, and the narrative strategies that carry field research to audiences outside the academy.
TOXIC LEXICON (FROM WAR TO PEACE)
How Language Makes—and Unmakes—Violence
Examines how language, images, and narratives construct enemies and legitimize violence in Russian-Ukrainian wartime discourse. Combines semiotic and discourse analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and documentary filmmaking to develop frameworks for detecting hate speech patterns and designing conflict prevention interventions.
INTIMATE HATE: Antisemitic Postcards and the Semiotic Architecture of Dehumanization
Working from the Blavatnik Archive's 1890–1930 collection of antisemitic postcards, the project reconstructs their semiotic grammar and centers the medium itself — addressed, handwritten, passed between friends and family in ordinary correspondence — asking how such a channel carried dehumanization into private life.

SEMIOSCOPE
A Research System for Computational Semiotics
Builds a digital research environment for analyzing meaning across text and image, where material is coded for form and the dimensions hostility runs on: affect, stigma, and the social context of use. Relational analytics and thematic clustering hold close interpretive reading and corpus-level pattern analysis in a single traceable workflow.
UNHATE!
Documentary Film Project
Ethnographic film on how people learn, sustain, and overcome hate, built from interviews with affected communities, scholars, and individuals navigating enmity and polarization. The project treats documentary as public scholarship, transforming fieldwork into an accessible narrative intervention.

Work-in-Progress
Research Experience

2025 — Researcher, UCLA Initiative to Study Hate with the California State Commission on Hate and Civil Rights Department.
Analyzed hate offender typologies, motivations, and behavioral patterns; developed policy recommendations and a hate crime coding system for law enforcement. Supervised by David N. Myers and David A. Kalkstein. 2024 — Researcher (GSR), UCLA Department of History.
Archival research on Soviet-era media, the Holocaust, and the Volhynia massacre; led a research network under wartime constraints. Supervised by Jared McBride. 2024 — Researcher (GSR), UCLA Slavic Department.
Gender labor in Soviet cinema: developed a cross-temporal archival database. Supervised by Lilya Kaganovsky.
Conferences

2026

Killtalk: Military Linguistic Infrastructure and the Semiotic Production of a Soldier. Presentation, Department of Anthropology, UCLA.

Stalin is Watching Being Watched. An Ethnography of Evaluation and the Making of the Stalinist Subject in the Kremlin Screening Room, 1934–1936 Research Presentation, SEEELC Conference on Stalinism, UCLA.

2025

Palatal Violence: Sound, Identity, and Enemy-Making in the Russo-Ukrainian War. SEEELC Linguistic Festival, UCLA.

What Can We Learn from Fascists...? Panel Organizer, ASEEES Convention, Washington, D.C.

Narrative Power: Public Space as a Site of Dialogue. Public Talk and Panel, Wende Museum, Los Angeles, California.

Living Things: Identity Cages, Commodified Selves, and the Politics of Becoming-With . Panel, Human Rights Framework/Global Solidarities Conference, UC Davis
Total Kiss: Romantic Biophilia, Relational Ontology, and the Ecological Imagination… CGS/GSC Colloquium, Stanford University
Biophilia . Ecofilm Screening: 1) at the Multispecies Salon, UCLA; 2) at the Queer Kinship Network International Conference, University of Oxford.
New Materialisms . Presentation, Cybercene Lab, UCLA
2024
Critical Perspectives on Emerging Forms of Global Solidarities. Panel, Institute for Criminological and Sociological Research, Belgrade, Serbia
2023

New East Cinema Symposium . Roundtable, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Pittsburgh
War in Ukraine. Peace Advocacy . Panel, 16BEAVER, New York.
2022
Community Fundraiser on Conflict Resolution Panel , Los Angeles, CA
Beneath The Surface with Suzi Weissman . KRFL Radio, Los Angeles. Interview on marginalization in Eastern Ukraine.
2014
Against Censorship: Independent Media in Authoritarian Contexts . Public talk, Bowdoin College, Maine
Language and Violence: Nationalism and Identity in Post-Maidan Ukraine . Panel, Ukrainian Writers’ Forum, Donetsk
2009
Henry Miller vs the National Expert Commission on Public Morality . Intervention performance, Ukrainian Parliament, Kyiv
Media EXPERIENCE

2021–22 — Head of Media, Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, Kyiv . Directed international initiatives on hate, trauma, and memory politics; produced multilingual public-facing documentaries; developed media strategies for dialogue around contested histories.

2022–24 — Media Analyst and Team Leader, Productive Playhouse, Los Angeles . Co-led a 365-person multilingual team analyzing antisemitism, hate speech, and extremist content for Google/YouTube; designed cross-linguistic detection schemas for covert propaganda; contributed to the content-safety protocols by which automated systems are trained to classify meaning across languages.
2022–24 — Producer, Dose of Society, Los Angeles . Field interviews and documentary narratives on social polarization and community repair; a platform with 2M+ followers and partnerships with Universal and Greenpeace.
2000–Present — DADAKINDER, Looo.ch, SHO, PROZA, X3M. Founded and edited major Ukrainian cultural media platforms; award-winning documentary practice across marginalized communities, political ethnography, and post-Soviet memory; 50K+ combined following.
Marginalized Communities & Social Justice:

My First Memory of Color (2018) . On racial identity formation through personal narratives.
Homeless Angels (2017) . Portrait of unhoused in LA.
Queerland (2016–2018): Church Of Fun, Fickle Wish, In the Womb of a Dragon. Portraits of DIY queer spaces.
American Revolution (2016–2021): I Am Somebody, I Am Revolutionary, Women’s March, George Floyd Rebellion, American Democratic Regime, Blacklight, Women’s Strike. Political ethnography.
Russian American (2012–2015): Wonderland, Dima, Dunsama, Angel. Intimate portraits of post-Soviet diaspora life in NY and LA.

Environmental Storytelling:
Biophilia (2025). On multispecies entanglement.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Violence, Ideology, Extremism:

We Kill Them Out Of Love (2024). Archival doc on genocidal rhetoric in Russian state media.
Manifesto (2021) . Affective video montage for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.
Elliot Rodger Here (2014) . On masculinity and violence through digital traces of the Isla Vista killings.
My New Orthodox Video (2013) . On nationalism and self-mythology in post-Soviet digital space.
Memory, Trauma & Historical Violence:
Because We Are Men Not Beasts (2021) . Tribute to Thomas Sankara and the anti-colonial struggle.
Black Man In A Red Suit (2021) . On Black representation in Soviet cinema.
Other (2023). Reframes Soviet propaganda through a postcolonial lens.

>>> FILM ARCHIVE
Publications

2025: How a Channel Islands Expedition Brought Environmental Humanities Vividly To Life, UCLA News.
On multispecies kinship, green pedagogy, and eco-research.
2024: To Blow (Up) the Mausoleum, Daraja Press.
On post-Soviet political mythology and affective memory.
2022: The Superfluous People Of Eastern Ukraine, LeftEast
Die Überflüssigen Menschen Aus Der Ostukraine, Widerspruch.
On marginalization, displacement, and identity in war-torn regions.

>>> TEXT ARCHIVE
Books and Multimedia

2012 — Fuhrer of God (Looo.ch, New York)
Explores political theology and patriarchal violence through experimental critical theory.
2012 — Queer Textbooks Series (Looo.ch, New York)
Satirical texts critiquing homophobia, censorship, and moral panic in Russia and Ukraine.
2007 — Slam! Theory and Practice of Poetic Revolution (Chili, Kyiv)
Manifesto and analysis of the spoken word movement in the post-Soviet literary scene.
Memberships

American Anthropological Association (AAA)

Populism Specialist Group, Political Studies Association (UK)

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Languages

Russian: Native proficiency

Ukrainian: Native proficiency

English: Full professional proficiency
ULYANOV@UCLA.EDU
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