I was born in the Soviet Union, in Russia in 1987. I began doing research in sociology while I was a student at Moscow State University. During my time at Moscow State University, I took part in an informal scholarly seminar where we studied contemporary western sociology and began our own research projects. This interaction with ambitious students and colleagues outside my university, my attendance of scholarly conferences, and my own independent reading of the contemporary sociological literature enabled me to develop a critical viewpoint on higher education in Russia. In 2007, the students from the Moscow State University sociology department who took part in this informal seminar formed the core of a pressure group whose goal was to improve the quality of the education provided by our department. When I was forced to leave Moscow State University as a result of my involvement with this protest group, I realized that self-education would not enable me to become a qualified sociologist. Therefore I completed my bachelor’s degree at the Institute of Sociology (Russian Academy of Sciences) and then enrolled in the master’s program at the European University in Saint Petersburg. I began to research university conflicts in various countries while simultaneously continuing my practical involvement with student and university protest and reform movements by participating in seminars and conferences with Russian and foreign students and teachers interested in the reform and democratization of higher education, and by participating in grassroots self-education initiatives. At present, several of my colleagues and I have succeeded in organizing the research group, involving young scholars, focused on the subject of politicization and a role of transformations of social networks in this process.

Research interests  : depoliticization, politicization, youth, political socialization, movement