Nina Direnko is a researcher and educator working at the intersection of environmental humanities, political ecology, and artistic practice, with a focus on war, landscape, and ecological transformation in Ukraine. Direnko’s work explores how war reshapes relationships between humans, non-human life, and territory — particularly through themes of occupation, ecological loss, protection, and extractivism. She combines research, writing, and artistic formats (texts, exhibitions, audio, educational projects) to investigate environmental violence and imagine the best possible postwar futures. 

Direnko works at the Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve (currently under occupation), where she directly engages with a protected landscape affected by war, and which informs both her research and creative practice. She is also developing an artistic research project for Stockholm Architecture Triennial 2027, focusing on landscape, war, and ecological futures. In the past, Direnko exhibited her projects at Tbilisi Architecture Biennale, 2024 as well as Architecture Biennale in Venice, 2023 (Ukrainian Pavilion), where she co-authored a programme focused on ecology and the ways war reconfigures opportunities and threats for nature protection in Ukraine.