Research

I have always been interested in the relationship between identity and power and have sought to understand why certain identity groups have greater or lesser access to political and economic power than others and how this inequality is justified. I am particularly interested in the role of discourse in constructing identities (ethnic, national, gender, etc.) and granting certain meanings a dominant position and excluding others to create social and political hierarchies as well as render certain groups, beliefs, behaviours and policy options legitimate or illegitimate.

I have been very lucky to have taken part in a number of large-scale collaborative projects over the course of my career. The first was between SSEES and the UCL Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research and examined the Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles of London’s East Europeans. The project, which was awarded £400,000 from the Medical Research Council, comprised a survey of over 2,500 East European migrants and 50 in-depth interviews and provided invaluable insights into the sexual behaviour and attitudes of these new communities.

Building on the insights into the experiences of LGBT migrants gained from the above project and seeking to understand the interplay between sexual and national identities, I subsequently carried out a research project on Polish, Russian and Brazilian LGBT migrants in London and Berlin. On the basis of 125 interviews I explored the extent to which LGBT migrants engage with their ethno-national diasporas to gain social, economic and psychological support and, if this is lacking, whether they develop quasi-diasporic networks of their own. I completed the first year of the project as a Visiting Fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2011-12, followed by three months at the Free University of Berlin in 2016, both funded by an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.

My more recent research has focused on the rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe. From 2018-22 I was the Principal Investigator of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network 'Delayed Transformational Fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe: Responding to the Rise of Populism', which was awarded €3,500,000 from the European Commission to train the next generation of populism scholars.

From 2019-22 I was Director of Research of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme 'Populist rebellion against modernity in 21st-century Eastern Europe’, which was awarded €3,000,000 from the European Commission to fund 35 sub-projects conducted at UCL and six European partners.

PhD students

I have supervised 11 PhD students to completion as primary or co-primary supervisor and am currently supervising a further seven:

Completed

Dr Oliwia Berdak: ‘I exist, I belong, I contribute: the self and the collective in Croatian national discourse’ (Bonnart-Braunthal Scholarship, Now: Senior Analyst, Forrester)
Dr Valentina Burrai: ‘Towards a symmetrical minority citizenship: group equality in Croatia, 1990-2007’ (Now: Senior Research Manager, Wood Mackenzie)
Dr Olga Cara: ‘Acculturation strategies and ethno-national identification: a study of adolescents in Russian-language schools in Riga’ (ESRC Scholarship. Now: Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Education, UCL Institute of Education)
Dr Diego Garcia Rodriguez: 'Qu(e)erying Islam: An Exploration of Queer Muslims and their Allies in Indonesia' (ESRC Scholarship. Now: Leverhulme Fellow, Nottingham University)
Dr Piotr Godzisz: ‘Laws in action or action without laws? Understanding the legal and policy responses to hate crimes based on sexual orientation in Poland’ (Bonnart-Braunthal Scholarship. Now: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-doctoral Fellow, Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Aydan Greatrick: 'Queer Identities in Conflict: Responses to and Experiences of Sexual Minority Refugees from Syria in the UK and Germany' (ESRC Scholarship. Now: Policy Officer, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Dr Julia Halej: ‘Other whites, white others: East European migrants and the boundaries of whiteness’ (Now: Senior Evaluation and Research Consultant at Coffey International Development)
Dr Thomas Hoctor: ‘Making a model: UK policy networks and the Nordic model’ (AHRC scholarship. Now: Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of Bedfordshire)
Dr Nikolay Nikolov: ‘A concrete life: a history of the panel housing complex in the former Soviet bloc’ (ESRC Scholarship. Now: journalist for Al-Jazeera+ and Mashable)
Dr Andrea Peinhopf: ‘States of uncertainty: Soviet identity and statehood in the secessions of Abkhazia and Transnistria’ (ESRC Scholarship. Now: ESRC Post-doctoral Fellow, University of York)
Dr Dzmitry Suslau: ‘Between Public Art and the Monument: National Identity and Memory in Contemporary Kaliningrad, Minsk, and Vilnius’ (SSEES Foundation Scholarship. Now: Lecturer at UCL)

Ongoing

Arthur Davis: 'Temporalities in Tension: Rethinking Healthcare Provisions for Sexual Migrants' (Wellcome Trust Doctoral Studentship)
Olga Doletskaya: '(Il)legal parenthood: examining the complexities of queer parenting in Russia' (LAHP Research Studentship)
Carlos Gomez del Tronco: 'How the fear of 'refugees' and Islamophobia stole the Czech political agenda (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Scholarship)
Rasa Kamarauskaite: ‘Body and space among Lithuanian sexual minorities’
Julia Ryng: 'Can documentary films challenge Polish homophobia?: Fostering understanding through documentaries between rural Poland and the LGBT+ community'
David Rypel: 'Politics of Belonging and Security among Queer Georgians' (Bonnart-Braunthal Scholarship)
Tyler Valiquette: 'Queer Migration in the Periphery: Responses to Venezuelan sexual minority refugees in Colombia and Brazil' (Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship)