Biographical Note
Originally trained as a journalist, I earned a BA degree and gained several years of experience working in local newspapers and magazines in Rostov-on-Don. My early academic interest centered on the White movement press in southern Russia during the Civil War (1917–1922), a topic I pursued in 2009. I completed my first Master’s degree (2011) in International Relations at Saint Petersburg State University, with a year spent at the University of Miami (USA). My thesis focused on the image of Mikhail Gorbachev in the American press (1985–1991) using qualitative content analysis. Between my first and second Master’s degrees, I studied as an Erasmus scholar at Humboldt University of Berlin, where I researched the portrayal of Gorbachev in German print media.
In 2014, I shifted my focus to anthropology and have remained committed to the field ever since. My second Master’s thesis, defended in 2016 at the European University at St. Petersburg, examined the identities of Russian-speaking asylum seekers in Germany during the so-called “refugee crisis”. The research was based on ethnographic fieldwork among refugees from Ukraine, Russia (Chechnya and Dagestan), and Central Asia, and was supervised by Prof. Sergey Abashin. Following this, I spent several years in Kyrgyzstan, where I taught at the American University of Central Asia, contributing to the Departments of Anthropology, Mass Media and Communication, and Psychology, and at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek.
From 2019 to 2023, I worked as a research associate at the Collaborative Research Center “Cultures of Vigilance” at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, where I investigated marriage migration from third countries to the EU. In 2023, I transitioned to doctoral student status and, as of 2025, am completing my article-based PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Irene Götz and Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr.
My academic interests include mobility studies, the anthropology of bureaucracy, post-Soviet societies, Russian speakers in Germany, minorities and discrimination, mass media and communication research, as well as the visual dimensions of knowledge production.
My CV can be found here.
From 2019 to 2023, I worked as a research associate at the Collaborative Research Center “Cultures of Vigilance” at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, where I investigated marriage migration from third countries to the EU. In 2023, I transitioned to doctoral student status and, as of 2025, am completing my article-based PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Irene Götz and Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr.
My academic interests include mobility studies, the anthropology of bureaucracy, post-Soviet societies, Russian speakers in Germany, minorities and discrimination, mass media and communication research, as well as the visual dimensions of knowledge production.
My CV can be found here.