My research interests include critical political economy, class, precarity and postsocialism more generally. I use ethnographic approaches to understand lived experience and personhood in the former Soviet Union.
My current research addresses two key debates in social research. It evaluates the transformative power of neoliberalism on the public and private identities of people in Russia and helps theorize this experience within the context of globalisation.
Before coming to Aarhus I worked at Birmingham University 2005-2016 and previously taught at the universities of Durham, Nottingham and Sussex. At Birmingham I was co-director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies
I have extensive in-country experience and knowledge of contemporary Russia, having lived and worked there in the 1990s. As a consequence, my research lies at the confluence of anthropology, sociology, area and cultural studies. I received research funding to investigate the negotiation of worker identity under postsocialism (British Academy 2010-2011), and an International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Marie Curie grant (2013-2017) looking at alternative approaches to development in the post-socialist region. Since coming to Aarhus I was awarded an AUFF Grant (2018-) on comparative approaches to social trust in postsocialist Europe and Denmark.
My books include: Everyday Postsocialism: Working-class Life Strategies in the Russian Margins (Palgrave 2016); New Media in New Europe-Asia (Routledge 2015); The Informal Postsocialist Economy: Embedded Practices and Livelihoods (Routledge 2014); Informal Economies in Post-Socialist Spaces: Practices, Institutions and Networks (Palgrave 2015); Identity and Nationbuilding in Everyday Postsocialist Life (Routledge 2017).
