Julia Cimafiejeva

Julia Cimafiejeva is a poet, writer, and translator. During her fellowship, she explores why Belarusian narratives remain largely invisible in the European context—and what changes when these perspectives become part of a shared European story.

In her writing, Julia Cimafiejeva brings together poetic and documentary forms, personal memory and collective history. Her work begins where European narratives remain incomplete—particularly with regard to Belarus and Eastern Europe.

In 2020, Julia Cimafiejeva left Belarus for political reasons. Since then, she has been living in exile, currently based in Berlin. In her texts, she examines how political violence, authoritarian rule, and forced migration continue to resonate in language, bodies, and family histories. Literature becomes a space in which individual experience and historical rupture are deeply intertwined.

During her fellowship at the Robert Bosch Academy, she focuses on the question of why Belarusian narratives have so far remained largely invisible in European discourse. Starting from the diagnosis of a cultural “absence,” she asks how this void has come about—and what changes when Belarusian experiences are understood as an integral part of Europe’s past and present.

At the center of her work is not representation in a narrow sense, but the expansion of existing narrative spaces: Which stories from Belarus are missing in European debates—and what new perspectives emerge when they are included? Her current research builds on earlier literary projects in which she connects family histories of exile with the political upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Julia Cimafiejeva understands the fellowship as a space for reflection, exchange, and in-depth research. In dialogue with actors from politics, academia, culture, and civil society, she seeks to develop new approaches to Belarusian narratives—and to gain impulses for her further literary work.