Lilia Sokolova

Dr. Lilia Sokolova is an art historian with a specialization in Russian and European modernism as well as contemporary art exhibitions. She was born into a Mari-Tatar family and grew up in Russia before moving to the Unites States. In 2015 she received the Master of Arts degree in art history from SCAD University, where her work “Sacred Image in a New Form: Eastern Orthodoxy in Wassily Kandinsky’s Art and Theory” received the university’s Best Thesis Award. In 2016-2019 she worked on a doctoral research project at the University of Cologne under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Norbert Nußbaum and in conversation with Friedhelm Mennekes. Her dissertation examines the phenomenon of contemporary non-religious art exhibitions in active churches in Germany and offers the first comprehensive English-language study of the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Köln. Lilia Sokolova has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in art history at Appalachian State, Lenoir-Rhyne and SCAD Universities in the United States. She currently lives and works in Cologne.