A visual and legal anthropologist. She received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research interests include visual anthropology, feminist and children's studies, and contemporary art. In 2015, she published the book Paysages Instables. Des Artistes Ukrainiens entre Révolution et Guerre [French: "Changing Landscape. Ukrainian Artists between Revolution and War"], published jointly with Editions de la galerie Pangée and Rodovid Publishing House. In 2015, the book won one of the prizes of the Lviv Publishers Forum. Since 2019, Natalia Chermalykh has been a senior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Children's Rights Research at the University of Geneva.

At the Center for Urban History, Natalia will be working and collecting materials for a new book on the anthropology of the war in Ukraine, which will be published in 2025 by the University of Toronto Press.