Kateryna (Kate) Malaia is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Mississippi State University. She grew up and studied architecture in Kyiv, and moved to the United States to pursue post-graduate education studying and teaching in Wisconsin, Oregon, and currently Mississippi.

Besides teaching design and architectural history, Kateryna studies the relationship between the built environment and the collapse of the USSR. In particular, she researches how apartment housing changed after 1991 when residents took remodeling their homes into their own hands. She also studies the monumental landscapes of Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, to understand the role monuments played in the politics and culture of the post-Soviet decolonization. Malaia’s writing has been published in venues including East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, PLATFORM, Architectural Histories, and Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.