Anya Naumova is a researcher and cultural practitioner working at the intersection of migration, youth, and heritage at the University of Groningen, with a focus on how migration reshapes local identities and belonging in peripheral regions. Her work examines how young people with and without migration backgrounds experience, interpret, and contest narratives of migration, place, and heritage in everyday life.

Her PhD research combines empirical and action-oriented approaches to study how migration is lived, discussed, and mediated through local identity and heritage. Using participatory, art-based, and reflexive methods, she explores how young people in Friesland engage with and reinterpret local heritage amid demographic change and public debate, and how these interpretations can support more inclusive forms of belonging.

Alongside research, Anya leads projects that connect institutions and lived experience. She is Project Lead at Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), managing the Asterisk tool, which supplements archives and objects with added context such as stories, perspectives, and data that were previously missing or overlooked. She also served as Project Program Coordinator at Stichting de Vrolijkheid, where she ran arts workshops in asylum seeker centers (AZCs).