I am a scholar of religion, but my research is characterized by interdisciplinary approach that combines theoretical insights and methodological tools from both social sciences and humanities. In addition to religiosity, my research interests include topics such as nationalism and migration. My areas of expertise are Islam and contemporary Paganism in Russia. In my current research, I focus on the governance and the representation of Islam in contemporary Russia. At the moment, I work as the principal investigator in the project "Jihad Against the Decadent West” or “Another Russian Colonial War”? Discussions about the War in Ukraine within Russian Muslims (MUSCOLWAR), funded by the Kone Foundation (2025-2027).
I have a title of docent in General history. I am a historian with a strong focus on economic modernization in the Soviet Union and Russia, especially the economic history of the Cold War and the transfer of technology between East and West during the Cold War.
I am member of the steering group of the international MA programme in Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies (MAREEES, former Russian Studies MARS). I teach on MAREEES programme and other study programmes at the University of Helsinki. I act as a supervisor in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Changes University of Helsinki.
I am a research member of the Finnish Historical Society, the advisory board of the Slavonic Library, a member of the scholarly advisory council of the journal Baltic Worlds and member of the advisory board of the journal Scandia.
Since 2018 I have taken on the responsibilities of deputy director at the Aleksanteri Institute.
I'm a sociologist and my research focuses on conspiracies, Post Truth politics, right-wing populism and anti-immigration discourses. I'm currently working as a researcher in the Horizon research consortium 'Analysis and Responses to Extremist Narratives' (ARENAS). This four-year project aims to characterise, measure, and understand the role of extremist narratives in discourses that have an impact on the political and social spheres, but also on the stakeholders themselves. It examines more specifically narratives about science, gender and the nation.
I'm a historian interested in Soviet collapse, the Baltic states, diasporas, transnational networks and international relations, collective memory, late socialism, and the post-cold War transitions in the Baltic sea region.
My first book "Politics of Uncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question and the Collapse of the Soviet Union" ( Oxford University Press, 2023) investigates the triangular relations between the US government, Baltic independence movements, and Moscow during the Perestroika years. My current research project focuses on collective memory dynamics during the final years of the Soviet state.
Before joining Aleksanteri Institute I was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University, a teaching fellow at the London School of Economics and a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland funded BALTRANS project (Political History Discipline, Helsinki University) . I hold a Ph.D. from Sciences Po (2016) and I'm currently a Baltics Sea Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (PA, USA).
I am a researcher of Russophone philosophy and Russian intellectual history. In my doctoral dissertation (2021) I analysed Gustav Shpet’s interpretation of Husserl’s early phenomenology as a philosophical foundation for his later cultural theory. After receiving my PhD in 2022 at Helsinki University I was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU in 2022–23. As a post-doctoral researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute's CUPOLA project (2024–26), my work focuses on philosophical continuities over the Soviet period. Exploring pre-revolutionary influences in the Soviet disciplines of history of Western philosophy, logic, and semiotics, I study how they became reinterpreted in the new ideological circumstances.
I am a PhD candidate. My research entails evaluating the effectiveness and impacts of Istanbul Convention along with other international conventions on reduction of violence against women during and post armed conflict. The dissertation will consist of a case study of Ukraine, Russian, Armenia & Azerbaijan, with a controlled case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, I am a doctoral researcher in the Political and Societal Violence in Russia (POSOR).
Since January 2025-2028, I am the project planner for the "'Till Death Do Us Part': Four Epochs of Violence in Every Family in Russia - What Makes it Russian?” (FEVER), project. I manage various administrative duties linked with the project, run the webpage and help in coordinating the events for the project. Lastly, I contribute research within the framework of the project on issues related to family violence in Russia in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods.
I hold a PhD in Humanities (History) from Vilnius University, awarded in 2019. My research focuses on an interdisciplinary approach, combining history, criminology, and law. I have investigated political and violent crimes (including gender-based violence), the death penalty, historical criminology, and legal history in 20th–21st century Lithuania.
In recent years, I completed a postdoctoral project on "homicides and punishments in Lithuania (1918-1940)" and taught the course History of Lithuanian Criminology at Vilnius University's Department of Criminology. Additionally, I participated in the project “The Criminal Case and Events of January 13: Legal, Criminological, and Historical Research,” served as the acting head of the Criminological Research Department at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, and worked as a researcher on the project "Violence against Women: From Harassment to Crime in 20th Century Lithuania" at Vytautas Magnus University.
Starting in autumn 2024 and continuing until 2028, I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute. I am part of the project “'Till Death Do Us Part': Four Epochs of Violence in Every Family in Russia - What Makes it Russian?” (FEVER), where I focus on studying family violence in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.
My research interests lie at the intersection of media and communication studies, journalism studies, and environmental studies. Currently I am involved in two research projects.
First, I am the principal investigator in the research project "Russian independent journalism in exile: in search of relevance and resilience". The project studies the emerging ecosystem of exiled media that had to flee Russia and explores and problematizes its relevance for their Russia-based readership.
Second, I study environmental communication in autocracies and in particular the environmental responsibility of the Russian platform companies.
Also, I am the organizer of the monthly "Online talks on Eurasian media", an academic initiative that brings together a wide range of researchers and practitioners to discuss current and emerging problems of media technologies, practices, and policies.
I am a Principal Investigator of a research project “Post-Soviet Immigration in the Wake of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Its Repercussions for the Finnish Immigration Policies” (IMPACT) funded by the KONE Foundation. This three-year project investigates the multifaceted implications of newly emerging immigration flows from post-Soviet societies into Finland in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 and Finland’s changing immigration policies.
I have published on immigration policies, irregular migration, migration and religion as well as state and society relations, authoritarianism and democratization in Central Asia. Previously I have run a research project funded by Academy of Finland. I also participate in a research project coordinated by Lund University.
I am a Doctoral Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, working on the project "‘Till Death Do Us Part’: Four Epochs of Violence in Every Family in Russia - What Makes it Russian?" (FEVER). I hold an LLM in Human Rights Law from University College London.
With a legal background specializing in human rights and criminal proceedings, I have been actively supporting vulnerable communities since 2010. I have successfully represented survivors of gender-based violence, hate crimes, and individuals with disabilities in both national courts and before the European Court of Human Rights, the CEDAW Committee, and the Human Rights Committee of the UN.
As part of my doctoral research in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal, and Regional Changes, I study access to justice and procedural accommodations for women with disabilities who are survivors of various forms of gender-based violence, with a particular focus on three jurisdictions: Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
I am a researcher with more than 70 published books and articles about migration and foreign expatriates in Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Finland, forced migration and interned civilians during the World War I and II, commemoration of dead on the field, Finnish and Soviet prisoners of war, forced migration and cross-national relations in the POW camps, archival research, archival studies, as well as military and cultural history.
My interests include also Digital Humanities, Digital History, Digital Education, science history and cultural history. In 2007-2023 I worked for the National Archives of Finland as development manager and head of a project responsible for digitalisation of the documents relative to the history of Finland in the archives of many East European and Eurasian countries.
My work as Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies focuses on issues such as political regime dynamics, political institutions, governance and policy-making, elections, political parties and political protests, and sub-national politics in Russia and Eurasia. During 2012-2017, I served as the Finland Distinguished Professor at the Aleksanteri Institute and was a cluster leader in the Centre of Excellence “Choices of Russian Modernisation”, funded by the Academy of Finland. I taught at the European University in St. Petersburg as professor of political science and specialized on Russian and Eurasian politics in a theoretical and comparative perspective. I also have expertise in authoritarianism, electoral and party politics, contentious politics, and regional and local government.
I am an author and/or editor of more than twenty books and author of more than 150 research articles, published in English, Russian, Finnish, and other languages. My current research concentrates on political and institutional foundations of quality of governance and policy conduct in Russia and post-Soviet Eurasia.
I am director of the international MA programme in Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies (MAREEES). My teaching duties include classes of courses and programmes coordinated by the Aleksanteri Institute.
I am a scholar in the field of Russian and Eurasian studies with a degree in political science. My work focuses on the relationship between governance, security, migration and societal change. I am the founder of the Aleksanteri Institute's Eurasian studies researcher network. My diverse research leadership includes the Research Council of Finland, Kone Foundation, and EU funded projects.
I teach in the International Master's Programme in Russian, Eurasian and Eastern Europe and supervise doctoral students in the field of Russian and Eurasian Studies. I hold the title of docent in political science at the University of Helsinki and the title of docent in comprehensive security at the National Defence University.
I am Professor emeritus, Visiting Researcher at Aleksanteri Institute (2024); Adjunct Graduate Faculty Member in the Canadian and Indigenous PhD Graduate Programs at Trent University, Ontario (2023-2026); Adjunct Professorship in Geopolitics, Faculty of Natural Sciences at University of Oulu (since 2002); Editor of Arctic Yearbook; Leader of Calotte Academy, and UArctic Thematic Network on Geopolitics and Security.
My research fields include IR, Geopolitics, Security Studies, Environmental Politics, Northern / Arctic Studies. The focus of my recent research is on environmental vis-a-vis military security.
Visiting Researcher | Docent
I received my PhD from the University of Helsinki (political history and anthropology) in 2014. Excluding a one-year, post-doc in the Faculty of English – where I taught biographical studies – I have been in the Aleksanteri Institute for 15 years. I am also affiliated with Urbaria, the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies. I hold the title of Docent of East European studies.
My wide research interests include the Balkans, the Cold War, the sociology of conflict, post-socialist studies, nationalism and exceptionalism. I have also lectured and published on corruption, religion in society, EU enlargement, and the politics of sports. I teach extensively in the Institute’s teaching programs. I have worked in the Institute’s projects Russian Modernization, Yugosalv Prison Nationalism, and as PI of Incarceration and Forced Deportation in Ukraine.
My articles have appeared in Baltic Worlds, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Idäntutkimus, Nordic Review of Internationals Studies, Politics in Central Europe, Rediscriptions, Russian Riddle, Scando-Slavica, Suomen Antropologi, and the Transatlantic Political Quarterly.
University Lecturer | Head of training
I hold the title of docent in Russian and Soviet history. My research relates to the political and social development of the region from the years of revolutionary Russia to the period after Stalin's death. I have specialized in the history of Finnish migration and their transnational networks as well as in the development of the Soviet penal policy and the gulag system. I am also interested in the questions of nationalism and interethnic relations in the Soviet Union.
I teach and supervise students in the MAREEES programme and in the PSRC doctoral programmes. I am also a board member of these programmes. I am responsible for developing national and international postgraduate research training at the Aleksanteri Institute.
I am a university lecturer specialized in cultural studies, with a particular focus on sound culture. I teach courses and supervise students in the Master's Program in Area and Cultural Studies, as well as the International Master's program in Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies (MAREEES), and occasionally in the Candidate's program in Cultural Studies. In addition to these roles, I have served as a tutor for courses dealing with the impact of humanities research and work life courses.
I supervise dissertations in the the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Changes (PSRC). My research interests include sound as a cultural phenomenon, listening methodologies, music as resistance, sensory studies, and other topics related to sound studies. In addition to my teaching and research responsibilities,
I am the Deputy Director of the MAREEES program and a member of the program’s steering committee. I am also a member of the steering group for the Master's program in Area and Cultural Studies and the director of the module on Eastern Central Europe, Southeastern Europe and Baltic Studies.
Adjunct Professor of Russian cultural history Elina Kahla works as a Principal Investigator at the Aleksanteri Institute.
Her expertise focuses on wide-ranging comparative research into the phenomena of culture and society, Russian civil religion and cultural productions (literature, film, art). She is involved in memory studies, in the politics of memory and currents of thought (Russian symbolism, messianism and apocalypticism) and intellectual history of Gulag.
I defended my dissertation in spring 2023. In my dissertation "Arctic oil and gas: Entanglements of gender, emotions and environment" I focus on the entaglements of Arctic oil & gas with emotions, gender and environment.
I work in the project Flowision, funded by Kone foundation and led by Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen. I am interested in how the northern resouce extractivism could be more sustainable, for both humans and environment.
I possess an academic background in History and Law. My current research primarily examines migration dynamics within the Nordic and Baltic regions, especially from former Soviet republics, with a particular focus on the evolution of immigration policies in Finland. I am the Principal Investigator of the project "Parallel Societies: Post-Soviet Immigration in the Nordic and Baltic" (2024–2025), funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers`. At the same time, I am part of the research team for the IMPACT project, led by Dr Sherzod Eraliev, which examines "Post-Soviet Immigration in the Wake of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Its Repercussions for Finnish Immigration Policies" (2024–2026), funded by the KONE Foundation.
My research interests also encompass the public perceptions of penal systems in modern Russia and the Nordic countries from a historical perspective. In previous work, I have conducted extensive research and published on the penitentiary system and prison reform in the post-emancipation Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Finland, with a particular focus on law-making concerning ethnic minority prisoners. From 2018 to 2022, I served as Research Coordinator for the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project "GULAG ECHOES: Echoes in the ‘Multicultural Prison’: Historical and Geographical Influences on the Identity and Politics of Ethnic Minority Prisoners in the Communist Successor States of Russia and Europe" at the Aleksanteri Institute.
My research interests include the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, as well as Soviet Karelia, nationalism, identity politics, history politics, and Russian domestic and foreign politics. I currently divide my time between research, teaching, public lectures and other expert tasks and the management of the institute.
I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Helsinki. I hold BA and MA degrees in European studies. In May 2020, I graduated with a PhD degree in world politics from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. My PhD dissertation dealt with the politics of the European Union’s police cooperation in the Western Balkans.
I am part of Professor Judith Pallot’s four-years’ research project “The Yugoslavian Penal Nationalism and the Politics of Punishment in the Contemporary Western Balkans: Testing the Limits of the European Human Rights Regime in the EU's Southeastern Neighbourhood”. I have engaged with this research not only due to my interest in the still under-explored Southeastern part of the EU's periphery, but primarily because of my long-standing passion for complex historical projects. Through this project I intend to contribute to a better understanding of the complex socio-political fabric of the Western Balkans and hopefully help to construct ways for the EU to deal with this region.
I work on the policymaking process in authoritarian regimes, specifically focusing on Russia and in comparison with other countries, including China and Turkey. Analysing different aspects of national economic, social and local policymaking in Russia – including areas of housing policy and housing finance, strategies of socio-economic development, family policy, social benefits and urban development – my research has examined different modes of the policy process (evolutionary change and paradigmatic shifts) and conditions under which they occur, the choice of policy instruments, the role of policy experts and the politics of expertise, the budget formation, public participation, and the role of ideas and discourses in the exercise of flexible authoritarian governance.
I am also a member of Urbaria: Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies. Previously I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence “Choices of Russian Modernisation” hosted by the Aleksanteri Institute and held visiting fellowships at King’s College Russia Institute and at the University of the West of England. I received my doctorate from the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford and before working in Helsinki was a junior research fellow at the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College and a senior member of the Common Room of St Antony’s College.
Senior Advisor, Research Services, support for research management.
Aleksanteri Institute’s international initiatives and project development, Visiting Fellows programme and Alumni network, strategic support for leadership.
I am a Doctoral Researcher studying questions of ethnicity and nationalism in Southeast Europe. My dissertation deals with ethnicity and alternative forms of identification in post-Yugoslav censuses. My research interests are in ethnicity, nationalism and minority politics in Central and Southeast Europe. I hold MA degrees from Central European University and University of Helsinki.
Santeri Kytöneva is currently working on an article-based doctoral dissertation as part of the Mannerheim Professorship of Russian Security Studies Working Group. In his doctoral dissertation, he examines the role of neoconservative actors in contemporary Russian ideology production through case examples. In the broader context, the political philosophical research seeks for ways to clarify why the seemingly marginal and radical ideas of Russian neoconservatives have become more prominent in Russian political discourse.
His research employs case studies to examine how different ideas and thinkers are instrumentalised to fit the contemporary Russian regime’s needs. Moreover, the research explores ways to conceptualise and demystify the underlying strands of intellectual influence in the Russian ideological landscape whilst maintaining a critical view of the Russian regime’s aggressive means in furthering its security interests. Prior to starting his doctoral studies, Santeri graduated from University of Jyväskylä with master’s in social sciences and philosophy and has worked at the Finnish National Defence University as a research assistant.
I hold the title of Docent in War Studies at the Swedish National Defence University and am a veteran of the Finnish Defence Forces. My research concerns modern warfare and war strategy and the (ethnographic) methods used to study these phenomena.
My monograph "'Slava Ukraini!' Strategy and the Spirit of Ukrainian Resistance, 2014-2023" (HUP 12/2023) tells the story of the volunteers lauded to have saved Ukraine twice. First in the spring of 2014 after the onset of the war in Donbas, and again in February 2022 after the large-scale Russian invasion. Aimed at interdisciplinary audience, this volume makes significant contributions to our understanding of events in Ukraine over the past decade. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with volunteer battalion fighters, the volume focuses on strategy, control, and use of force.
Most of my teaching and public and private lectures are on issues of war and peace. In addition to the University of Helsinki, I also lecture at the Swedish and Finnish Defence Colleges, among others. I also regularly appear in the Finnish, Swedish and international media, commenting on the ongoing war in Ukraine and other security-related issues.
I'm a doctoral student in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal, and Regional Changes. I hold a MA degree in Global and Regional Security Issues from Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2020), and M.Soc.Sc. degree in European and Nordic Studies from the University of Helsinki (2021). In my PhD studies, I focus on Russian strategic communication, specifically on framing enemy images in the national discourse. Within this framework, I explore the so-called enemization of Russian public discourse in my PhD dissertation. In addition, I am also interested in Russian foreign politics in Europe, and Russia's security issues.
Vitalii Lebediuk is an Associate Professor of the department of Political Science at the National University “Ostroh Academy” in Ukraine. At the Aleksanteri Institute Dr. Lebediuk is conducting his ongoing research focused on analysis of patterns of local elections in Ukraine and, especially, of the impact of political decentralization of Ukrainian local governance on their dynamics. His visit and stay funded by the Academy of Finland mobility grant, aimed at supporting Ukrainian scholars and strengthening their collaboration with Finnish universities.
Tatiana Levina's research is centred on Soviet-era philosophy, with a specific emphasis on the contributions of female philosophers. Her research encompasses the areas of philosophy of art, feminist philosophy and Russian philosophy. She graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State University with a PhD in the philosophy of film. She taught philosophy at the HSE University, Moscow, Russia until 2020. She has twice received a grant from the Malevich Society, in 2018 and 2025.
From 2021 to 2023, she held the position of Academy in Exile Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, Germany, where she focused on women philosophers from the Circle of Dissent in the late Soviet Union. In 2021 and 2023, she was awarded monthly grants for her research on Kazimir Malevich at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, Austria. In 2024, as a German Sakharov Society Fellow at Ruhr University Bochum, she continued her research on dissidents and political prisoners in the years before the collapse of the USSR, completing the chapter "Caring for the Truth: Lina Tumanova's Scholarship and Human Rights Activism in the Late USSR". The publication of a book, entitled "The Abstract Revolution: Platonism in the Avant-Garde Era", is planned for 2025.
For the CUPOLA project, she is conducting research on women philosophers in the Stalin era. This project represents a continuation of her research, which was initiated in her chapter "Sofia Yanovskaya in Defence of Abstractions: Between Soviet Ideology and Bourgeois Idealism", for Stalin Era Intellectuals: Culture and Stalinism (edited by Vesa Oittinen and Elina Viljanen) in 2022. Her present study focuses on women philosophers in the period 1930-1953, analysing their strategies for overcoming marginalisation in combination with the survival mode of living in a totalitarian society.
I’m a historian (originally church historian) and university lecturer of Russian and East European Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. All my studies have been informed by a strong interdisciplinary approach: my research deals not only with history, but also, for example, with political science, theology, philosophy and history of ideas. My current fields of interests are focused to the dilemmas of contemporary Russian history (post-mortem history of Putin’s securocracy) and the history of perestroika in Ukraine. I am now investigating the archival material from the KGB filial at Kiev; the “operation Blok” (against the Ukrainian dissidents in 1970’s) and the history of last years of the Soviet system through the lenses of the secret police.
To mention some of my activities; I have been in a position of a Senior Associated Member, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford in 1999–2000. In 2005–2006 I was the director of the international Finnish-Russian Cross-Border University Consortium project. From 2006 I received the tenured position of university lecturer of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Helsinki.
I am a PhD candidate specialising in philosophy, with a particular focus on Continental philosophy. My primary research areas include German Classical Philosophy, contemporary French theory, and Marxism. I obtained my master’s degree from Nankai University (Tianjin, China, 2022). Currently, I am pursuing my doctoral studies at Fudan University (Shanghai, China) while participating in a joint training program at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Oct 2024 through Oct 2025).
My doctoral research focuses on the revival and reconfiguration of contemporary metaphysics. My dissertation, titled "On The Concept of Truth in Badiou's Philosophy," examines new dimensions of truth in contemporary thought through the lenses of ontology, phenomenology, and religious philosophy. Expanding on these investigations, I further analyse the latest developments in Marxist studies and their philosophical implications.
I am a visiting professor at the Aleksanteri institute until December 2024. My specialization is in political sociology, and I am particularly interested in issues related to the new forms of migration, integration and the context of reception, political attitudes and behavior, as well as inter-ethnic relations, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine. I am the director of the Centre for Diaspora and Migration Research and a tenure professor at the University of Latvia. Currently, I am leading the Latvian Council of Sciences (LCS) grant “Reception of migrants under conditions of uncertainty: governance and local level inclusion”, and I am a senior researcher in the LCS project “The Baltic Russophone identity in flux: Political behavior, boundary making, and media practices after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
I am a historian and an area specialist in East Central and South Eastern Europe. I hold the Title of Docent in Political History. Since May 2023 I lead the Finnish team of the international, EU-funded research consortium Analysis and Responses to Extremist Narratives (ARENAS). The four-year project aims to characterise, measure, and understand the role of extremist narratives that have an impact on the political and social spheres.
In am interested in how the rule of law, strategic culture and nationalism present themselves in European countries. Previously, I have also studied the role of competition in societal development and Cold War interactions.
In 2013, I was appointed as a founding member of the Teachers’ Academy at the University of Helsinki, as acknowledgement of teaching skills and scholarship in education. Ever since, I am working to develop the internationalization of higher education and to invent new methods for interdisciplinary teaching.
I’m a quantitatively oriented social scientist specialized in Russia and post-Soviet countries. At the moment, I work as a doctoral researcher in doctoral programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change (PSRC). In my dissertation research, I examine the relationship between political participation and autocracy in Russia and more generally in post-Soviet countries.
I’m a scholar of Russian and Islamic studies, hold a PhD in politics. I have considerable experience of working in academic, Islamic, expert organisations and media in the Russian Federation and Turkey. My articles and interviews have been published in a number of Russian and international media outlets. I’m author of several books on Islamic theology and Islam in Russia. At the moment, I work as postdoctoral researcher in the project "Jihad Against the Decadent West” or “Another Russian Colonial War”? Discussions about the War in Ukraine within Russian Muslims (MUSCOLWAR), funded by the Kone Foundation (2025-2027).
I am Doctoral Candidate in History at the Central European University in Vienna. My thesis, tentatively titled "Epistemologies of Will and Morality in Russian Empire. Cross-Imperial Scientific and Philosophical Dialogues over the Post-Reform Imperial Subject" focuses on the scientific conceptualisation of self through and around will and morality in the human sciences in the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire.
I do history of the human sciences, in particular psychiatry and psychology. In my research I look at the various epistemic processes in these sciences and disciplines, at the production of theories and concepts people use to make sense of themselves and those around them. I consider how such concepts as normality, norm and deviance are being conceptualised, how and why their meanings shift, and how are these eventually employed to categorise and hierarchise people and groups in society.
For my doctoral project I study all of these epistemic processes in the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire, in a time when human sciences fought for recognition, and the imperial order was being challenged by political, social and cultural changes. I look at how psychiatry and experimental psychology conceptualised in their research the ideal type of self through and around pathologies and laboratory experiments on will and morality. I consider how they traced this model of self they moulded in their research to the ideal subject they wanted active in an Empire grappling with modernisation and the discontents of this.
I consider this production of knowledge about the self as a form of dialogue within and between various human sciences, as well as within and across the empire. I study the ways knowledge produced in what Russian scientists called the West, is being received and assimilated in the imperial intellectual context, that was necessarily informed by the local socio-political and cultural environment. I pay particular attention to epistemic centres that are located at the fringes of the empire, both geographical and institutional. I study how knowledge – acquired through observations, experiments and reflections, produced in the borderlands and various peripheral centres, in university halls, hospitals and prisons, was negotiated across the empire through journals and newspapers, lectures and conferences. I consider how the various strands of imperial diversity – race, nationality, religion, estate, as well as gender inform this epistemic processes in which scientists moulded the ideal self and subject of the Empire.
I am a socio-legal scholar with a particular interest in law, gender and human rights. I have been engaged in socio-legal research and policy activities with public and voluntary sector organisations since 1996. I have worked as a researcher, trainer and professor for academic and non-academic agencies and projects, including the UN (UNDP program in Central Asia), NGOs and universities and research institutes in Russia, Finland, the US and the UK.
I co-chair the Women and Gender Network of the European Social Sciences History Conference. I am also an editor for the Palgrave book series World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence and one of the co-editors of Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History.
My newest book The Foundations of Russian Law (2023) elucidates the main concepts and frameworks behind Russian law, and uses original legal sources and case law to explain how it operates in practice. My past projects focus on family violence (violence against parents and domestic violence), the history of crime (homicide and, particularly, femicide), legal history, gender history, and history of sexuality.
My current projects include Political and Societal Violence in Russia (POSOR), supported by the Norwegian Research Council (2024-2026) and ‘Till Death Do Us Part': Four Epochs of Violence in Every Family in Russia - what makes it Russian? (FEVER), funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024-2028). In addition, I am a country contact for the COST action CA23149, Democratization at stake? Comparing Anti-Gender Politics in CEE and NME countries (Antigender-Politics), MC Finland Team PI (2024-2028).
I am the head of a multidisciplinary, Master’s level area studies minor called Expertise in Russian and Eastern European Studies (ExpREES). The Aleksanteri Institute coordinates this programme on behalf of a Finnish university network with twelve member universities. ExpREES focuses on Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia and South Caucasus. I plan and develop teaching and other activities in this programme as well as teach and supervise ExpREES students. I supervise also PhD theses and welcome applications that are close to my research interests.
I hold a PhD in Political Science (University of Tampere) and the title of Docent in Political Science, specifically International Politics (University of Turku). My current research interests deal with global knowledge production, international academic collaboration and the link between international higher education and international politics. In particular, I am interested in international knowledge relations in Central Asia. In the past, I have studied, for example, Russia’s education diplomacy in the EU and Central Asia. In general in my previous research I have focused on Russia’s role in international relations, e.g. from the point of view of geopolitical argumentation.
Previously I worked at Tampere University, Finland, for 20 years in different positions in teaching, research and administration. There I supervised Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctor’s theses and taught courses on Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, geopolitical thinking and methodology, as well as convened a double degree programme in International Relations. In addition, I have been the chair and deputy chair of the Finnish Political Science Association.
Mikhail Nakonechnyi received his DPhil (PhD) in History from the University of Oxford in 2020. He is a University Researcher and Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant "Death, Smoke, and Mirrors: Manipulation of Health Data in Liberal and Authoritarian Custodial Institution" (2025–2030), based at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki.
The project examines the techniques employed by penal authorities to manipulate health data and conceal prisoner health conditions in British metropolitan, Indian colonial, American, and Soviet-Russian prisons and camps. It is the first to compare why, how, and to what extent different penal systems distort health data over a long durée. It traces the origins of these distortions and explains why their outcomes vary so profoundly. The project rejects false continuities and superficial collations between case studies, opting instead for a data-driven, context-dependent approach. It uses health data manipulation in penal systems as an entry point to examine broader social structures, values, and governmental cultures within the case studies. It also generalizes the penal focus to modern total institutions governed by numbers, investigating how they quantify performance through mortality rates and, at times, game statistics to meet institutional goals.
The chief empirical contribution of Nakonechnyi’s previous research is a revision of the Gulag death toll, demonstrating a higher mortality rate than previously assumed. He also examined ethnicity and race construction in the Soviet penal system as part of GULAGECHOES and integrates this expertise into Death, Smoke, and Mirrors. Nakonechnyi's research appears in Kritika, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and Cahiers du Monde Russe, as well as volumes from Indiana and Pittsburgh University Presses.
I study national bordering in Finnish and Russian media, ranging from national television channels to transnational discussion forums. My primary research interests lie in the discursive production of socio-spatial (non-)belonging on one hand, and the social consumption of information on the other.
My post doc research at the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland is titled “Digital borders” and it currently includes three major subprojects. One of them is continuation of my research stemming from the Kone Foundation project “Flowision” on the production of environmental knowledge in Russian non-institutionalized eco-Telegram channels. Another is connected to the Academy of Finland project “Transnational Death,” where I analyse national and transnational meaning-making in mediated representations of death. Alongside these two long-running projects, I have initiated a study of bordering practices and rationalisation related to Russian nationality in Finland and other European countries.
In my other relevant activities, I have served as the co-editor of Aleksanteri Insight alongside Kaarina Aitamurto since 2021 and as the vice-chair of the Finnish Association for Russian and East European Studies since 2022. Additionally, in Autumn 2023, I was a visiting scholar at Université Grenoble Alpes.
I am a doctoral researcher in the PhD programme on Political, Social, and Regional Change and a member of the Flowision research consortium led by Professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen.
In my dissertation, I explore the social biography of the emerging extractive industries tied to the “green” transition in the Kola Peninsula, the easternmost part of Saami land, and the socio-political and cultural challenges they create. My research focuses on how these industries perpetuate and deepen power imbalances with the Indigenous Kola Saami by analyzing how narratives of Indigenous rights and sustainable futures are leveraged to advance extractive projects in Saam’ jiemm’n’e.
I am also interested in Arctic environmental governance in Russia and the socio-ecological challenges arising from the “green” transition.
I am Education Coordinator for the Master’s Programme in Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies (MAREEES). I also coordinate the East Central European, Southeast European and Baltic Studies (ESEB) and Ukrainian Studies modules. In addition, I am contact person for the Building virtual exchange capacities in the Baltic Sea Region (EnVision) network funded by Nordplus.
If you have any questions concerning MAREEES, ESEB, Ukrainian Studies or EnVision, please turn to me!
I am professor emeritus of the University of Oxford. I have been researching and writing on the former Soviet Union and the Russian Federation for my whole academic career and up to my retirement in 2016, I was Professor of the Geography of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia at the University of Oxford and a former President of BASEES. In 2018, I was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant which I brought to Aleksanteri Institute. GULAGECHOES took forward the work I had been engaged in on the Russian prison system since 2006, when I conducted my first interviews in penal colonies in the Russian Federation. The project explored the changing policy toward ethnic minority prisoners and the latter’s experiences in prisons and correctional colonies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The project has now ended but work on producing articles and books based on five years of fieldwork continues. In 2021, I was awarded a Research Council of Finland grant to extend my research to the former Yugoslavia. This project ends in August 2025, but I will remain a visiting researcher in the Aleksanteri Institute.
I coordinate the Finnish Universities national network of Expertise in Russian and Eastern European Studies (ExpREES). My main task is to make sure that the roughly 100 study units provided by the 12 Finnish network universities all fit into the big picture and that all the ExpREES students around the country have all the needed info and guidance in their studies.
As our students are geographically scattered all over Finland, my aim is to promote online teaching and e-learning. I'm also interested in other projects in education development and international education exchange
I am specialized in the research of Russian media, journalism, culture and fiction in the sphere of environmental humanities.
I work in the project FLOWISION: Best from Both Worlds – Enhancing Energy Transition in Russia and Finland by Making Resource Flows Visible, where I study practices of mediatized knowledge production and distribution on fossil and renewable energy and climate change in Russia.
I earned my PhD in Russian Language and Culture at Tampere University in 2021 with my dissertation Imagined Riverography of Late Twentieth-Century Russian Prose. My other research interests include climate fiction, nuclear fiction and nuclear narratives in media. I am the editor-in-chief of Idäntutkimus, the Finnish review of East-European studies, and the vice-chair of the Society of Finnish Slavists.
In January-February 2025, I will teach the course The Russian and Soviet Environmental Imagination that belongs to the EXPREES and MAREEES Programmes as well as the Master’s Programme on Languages and Master's Programme in Area and Cultural Studies: https://studies.helsinki.fi/kurssit/toteutus/otm-3c7ccf6a-1f16-404f-b899-952309…
I am a historian of modern Russia and Europe (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2011) and a visiting researcher at the Institute. I am currently working on two book projects. The first, funded by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (2025–2026), explores the history of Stalin- and post-Stalin-era lyric poetry, and shows how Soviet lyric poets laid a foundation for the cultural “Thaw” of the mid-1950s–1960s. The second traces the history of the diary over the same period, and demonstrates that diary writing, among Soviet writers, poets, and critics, captured a mode of cognition that played a crucial role in propelling post-Stalin change as well.
My work has appeared in Kritika, Slavic Review, The Russian Review, and other publications.
I have held a number of fellowships, including from Columbia University, American Councils for International Education, the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture—Simon Dubnow, the Kennan Institute, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, and the Aleksanteri Institute.
At the Aleksanteri Institute, I teach courses in Russian, Ukrainian, and Jewish history.
I am a Doctoral Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, funded by Columbia University’s Harriman Institute’s grant and an Associate Fellow at GLOBSEC. I divide my time between policy-oriented analysis on climate security and my Ph.D. on the links between identity politics and climate change discourses in the EU and Russia.
Previously I was the Director of the Climate Programme at GLOBSEC, where I led the work on climate security and the green transition in the CEE region and at EU level. Prior to joining GLOBSEC, I worked in several think tanks, European Union Agencies, and international organisations, including the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) and the Italian Consulate in Moscow. I graduated with the highest honors from MGIMO University (MA in Politics and Economics of Eurasia) and Catholic University of Milan (BA in Foreign Languages and International Relations).
I am a philosopher of science with an interest in values in science. At the Aleksanteri Institute, I am researching the role of values in science in the Soviet Union with the aim of determining how past science can inform our normative frameworks regarding the management of social, political, and epistemic values in scientific practice more broadly.
I defended my PhD dissertation in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at University of Cambridge in 2019. My PhD research focussed on epistemic values in the development of periodic systems of chemical elements, including the system of the Russian chemist Dmitrii Mendeleev. I also have an interest in the role of values in climate science as my previous postdoc concerned values in climate modelling.
I have been a principal instructor for Ethics of Medical Technology at KTH and a seminar supervisor for Philosophy of Science and Ethics and Politics of Science and Medicine at University of Cambridge. I am also one of the editors and co-founders of Jargonium, the blog for history and philosophy of chemistry.
I am associate professor at the University of Helsinki (Aleksanteri-institute) and hold Mannerheim Chair of Russian Security Studies. The joint professorship between the University of Helsinki and the National Defense University was established in August 2017. My responsibilities include development of research on Russian security policy at the University of Helsinki and at the National Defense University.
I lead a working group of the Mannerheim Professorship at the University of Helsinki, which brings together research on Russian foreign and security policy. The working group produces research on the changing factors in Finland's strategic environment.
In my own research, I examine changes in Russian strategic thinking, in particular threat analysis and the assumptions that guide it, the war rhetoric that underpins Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, and the debate in Russian war studies on the aims of the (aggressive) war.
I am a doctoral researcher in the PhD programme on political, social and regional change.
In my dissertation, I study the formation of threat portrayals of Islam and Muslim populations, particularly in the context of Russian strategic narratives and warfare. The research aims to shed light on the evolution of Russian strategic thinking and population management practices, as well as on the determinants of threat assessment and anticipation.
I am conducting my research as part of the Mannerheim Professorship working group on interdisciplinary research on Russian foreign and security policy.
I am a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki in the Political Societal and Regional Changes programme (PYAM). My research borders the disciplines of history and penal sociology, drawing especially from the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. My dissertation, entitled Katyusha Behind Bars: Governmentality and Commemoration in Russian Prisons, focuses on public memory and the act of commemoration in Russian prisons. My current work looks to link themes of nationalism and militarism with the study of power, politics, and punishment. I currently work in the multidisciplinary ERC funded Gulag Echoes project, examining ethnic, religious, and other salient identity construction in the post-Soviet penal space. I received my BA in History at the University of Dayton, USA and a MA in Russian and Eastern European Area Studies from the University of Helsinki, Finland.
I am a scholar of Soviet history working at the intersection of history and anthropology. My primary research objective is to uncover the behind-the-scenes mechanisms of how the Soviet project unfolded in new, underdeveloped territories and in certain life domains through newly established materiality, human-nature interaction, and social bonding.
My first book ‘New Death for a New Man? Funeral Culture of the Early USSR’ (in Russian) was published in 2022 by the New Literary Observer publishing house. Currently, I am finalizing my second book manuscript, ‘Socialism in the Woods: Dweling in Emerging Materiality of Late Soviet Union.’
I hold PhD in Political Science and possess proficiency in research on social policy and institutions in Russia based on qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical analysis. I serve as the principal investigator of the project “Sensing as a Refugee: Vulnerable Bodies on the Move” (2023-2026) supported by the Kone Foundation.
I've recently published the article “Outsourcing Elderly Care to Private Companies in Russia: (non)Compliance and Creative Compliance as Responses to the Principal-Agent Problem” in East European Politics. My co-authored and co-edited research appeared in Post-Soviet Affairs, Europe-Asia Studies and in the Routledge Advances in Social Work series.
From 2018 I have worked as associate professor and professor of Russian Environmental Studies, focusing on issues such as environmental policy, resource policy, regional and environmental planning, democracy and power. Currently I'm in charge of the Flowision project, funded by Koneen Säätiö. The research project examines how fossil and renewable energy is presented in Russian and Finnish societies.
My teaching duties include lectures in the international MA programme MAREEES as well as other special courses and programmes coordinated by the Aleksanteri Institute. I’m also actively involved in societal interaction taking part in discussions in the media and at public events as well as providing expertise for public officials and the government.
I am a visiting doctoral researcher with the Mannerheim Professorship of Russian Security Studies Working group until June 2026. I hold an MA in European and Russian Affairs from the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy (2022). My research interests lie within the realm of security studies, specifically state-perpetrated repression and violence. My doctoral research examines the development of obedience and cohesion within state security services, examining how these dynamics influence the repression of protests.
I have a PhD in musicology and I am an Associate Professor (Title of Docent) of Russian intellectual and cultural history at the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies of the University of Turku. I currently work as a research project leader (CUPOLA) and the head of Aleksanteri Research Group for Intellectual History (ARGIH). I also teach in the Institute's multidisciplinary Master's Programs. I defended my Doctoral thesis, The Problem of the Modern and Tradition: Early Soviet Musical Culture and the Musicological Theory of Boris Asafiev (1884–1949), at the University of Helsinki in January 2017. My post-doctoral research project focused on Soviet cultural theories and the intellectual culture of the Stalin era. My project produced a volume Stalin era intellectuals: Culture and Stalinism (Abington: Routledge, 2023), which was edited me and Vesa Oittinen. For many years, I have also analyzed Post-Soviet Russian culture and politics, especially classical music and Russia’s cultural statecraft (Forsberg & Mäkilä eds. 2022 Abingdon: Routledge).
My new research project “Culture’s politics under authoritarian rule: Soviet civilizationism and the case of the humanities during the Stalin era” (CUPOLA, 2024-2028) is funded by the Kone Foundation and is a highly ambitious attempt to reconceptualize and historically reconsider Soviet culture and the relationship between culture and politics from transnational perspectives and in an authoritarian context. CUPOLA project arises from my longstanding study of Soviet humanities and the interaction and relationship between culture and (state) politics in Russian history. My multidisciplinary CUPOLA team draws on research skills and theoretical insights from across humanities, Russian and East European area studies and political studies. CUPOLA project develops a novel theoretical concept – culture’s politics –, which forms the central methodological tool to study how to conceptualize in an interdisciplinary way the political aspects of culture or as I term it “politicality of culture” and its relationship with state politics. My other research project concerns Finnish music journalism of Russian/Soviet music from the late 1940s to the present day.
I’m a doctoral researcher in the Programme of Political, Societal and Regional Change at the University of Helsinki. My research focuses on public opinion polls in Russia under the wartime censorship. As a grant-funded researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute I work in the project PROPA (Panel Study of Russian Public Opinion and Attitudes) with Margarita Zavadskaya and Alexey Gilev.
Margarita Zavadskaya holds a Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (Fiesole, Italy, 2017). She has worked at the Electoral Integrity Project (Universities of Harvard and Sydney, 2015), the European University at St. Petersburg (2016-2022), and the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki (2018-2022) as a researcher and lecturer. From 2019 to 2022, Margarita served as PI for the research project ‘Electoral Malpractice, Cybersecurity and its Political Consequences in Russian and Beyond (ElMaRB)’. From 2023, Margarita serves as a co-PI to the PROPA Panel Study of Russian Public Opinion and Attitudes.
Margarita has broadly published on the role of elections in authoritarian states, mass protests and public opinion in journals such as Electoral Studies, Democratization, East European Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs, Russian Politics, Europe-Asia Studies and others. She is the editor of the book Politics of the Pandemic: Blame Game and Governance in Russian and Central-Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2023) and co-editor of Electoral Integrity and Political Regimes: Actors, Strategies and Consequences (Routledge, 2018). Currently, Margarita focuses on the political impact of Russian emigration in receiving countries, including EU member states, under the auspices of the OutRush research project.
Olga Zeveleva is a political sociologist working on violence, war, and prisons. She is currently Affiliated Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, and Assistant Professor in Conflict Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is PI of the Kone-funded project “Polycrisis of violence: Ecofeminist perspectives on the war in Ukraine and the military-prison nexus (PUMP),” which runs from 2024 to 2030 and is hosted jointly by the University of Helsinki and Utrecht University. She was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute on the ERC-funded project “Gulag Echoes in the Multicultural Prison” from 2019 to 2024. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge and has carried out qualitative field research in Germany, Estonia, Ukraine, and Russia, and has published her work in peer-reviewed academic journals such as The British Journal of Sociology, Current Sociology, and Punishment and Society.