Jenia Gorbanenko is an anthropologist (PhD), specialising in the study of religion and outer space. In her doctoral research, carried out as part of the ETHNO-ISS team – a project funded by the European Research Council to undertake a multi-sited ethnography of the International Space Station – she interrogated the Russian Orthodox Christian perspective on space exploration. Jenia researches how institutions and phenomena that burgeoned in the late-Soviet period endure, evolve, and morph over time, continuing to bear upon the present in contemporary Russian society. She has co-edited an open access volume Exploring Ethnography of Outer Space: Methods and Perspectives and is currently working on turning her PhD thesis into a book. Having worked in commercial and applied anthropology since 2016, Jenia is also a freelance ethnographic consultant and qualitative researcher.

Portrait of Jenia Gorbanenko
Forthcoming
  • Gorbanenko, J., 2025. Praying with cosmonauts: Russian Orthodox in the space age, Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies, 25.
Under review
  • Gorbanenko J. Orthodox icons and cosmonaut exemplars: Which way to Heaven? London: Routledge.
  • Gorbanenko J. Anthropology of religion and science in outer space, in Jeevendrampillai D. & Parkhurst A. eds. Extra-terrestrial Anthropology, London: Routledge
  • Gorbanenko J. Saints and cosmonauts, in Buchli V., Jeevendrampillai D., Mercier D., Petrou P. & Praet I. eds. Off-Earth Atlas
Books
  • Gorbanenko J., Jeevendrampillai D. & Kozel A. eds. 2025. Exploring Ethnography of Outer Space: Methods and Perspectives. New York: Routledge [open access]
Peer reviewed articles
  • Gorbanenko J. 2024. A working typology of transcendence in anthropology, Religion and Society: Advances in Research [open access]
  • Carroll T., Lackenby N. & Gorbanenko J. 2022. Apophatic love, contagion, and surveillance: Orthodox Christian responses to the global pandemic, Anthropology & Medicine [open access]
Chapters
Articles in Russian
  • Gorbanenko E. 2023. Krestnyǐ khod in orbit: enchurching science and the planet, Neprikosnovennij Zapas, 150, 4/2023 [open access]
Podcasts and event recordings