Natalya Antonova is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Gender Studies (Central European University) and a research intern at the CEU Democracy Institute (De/Re-Democratization Working Group). She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Philosophy (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University). Natalya’s research approach synthesizes critical theory and philosophy with a historical and discursive analysis of creative labor (the visual art form and the technology of craft) into an interdisciplinary inquiry that can be called cultural studies. In her research practice, Natalya has been analyzing the ideological and economic forces that regulate and limit the self-perception and realization of creative labor as a subject/object of freedom, autonomy, and agency in late capitalist modernity. Natalya’s research interests include an exploration of the historical dynamic of the post-1989 industrialization of cultural production on the basis of (micro)entrepreneurship, philanthropic capital, ideologies of individual emancipation and democratization of society.