Research group Dr Zvereva and Co

Our research team consists of experienced and promising young academics from Russia and Lithuania currently living and working in Finland. A part of our current research revolves around these complex and worrying issues. The members of our interdisciplinary and multinational research group have expertise in Russian politics and cultural policy studies, language and communication studies, visual research and sociology. In the context of our research, we address the discourse of Russian conservative leadership from various perspectives that are helpful to conceptualise the common ground for problematizing our group project.

Recent research from Dr Vera Zvereva (2020a; 2020b; 2021) gives an insight into the contemporary political language, populism and state propaganda in Russian digital media. As part of this project, she will develop these themes by exploring the specifics of the discourse of Russian digital diplomacy and the features of the mediatized political language of the Russian political elite. 

Tatiana Romashko’s (2018a; 2018b; 2020) research demonstrates how Russian state cultural policy is used as a tool of Putin’s political project that advocates conservative leadership among national and international cultural and academic circles. It points out to such implications as elimination of a range of autonomous actors, civil networks and collaborative activities with European countries as well as the discrimination of cultural and political diversity. In this project, Tatiana is going to focus on the Finnish case of the ‘Russian World’ and its extension within the cultural and intellectual milieu.

Rasa Žakevičiūtė’s (2019) research addressing post-Soviet transformation of the Baltic states brings forward the socio-economic aspects of the post-Soviet reality and sociological perspective into the inquiry of the contemporary Russian transformation. Additionally, her experience in sociological research and visual studies (Žakevičiūtė & Kędra forthcoming) will provide the know-how for the methodological excellence of this project.