Dr. Kristiina Silvan is Postdoctoral Fellow in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. She earned her PhD with Distinction in the discipline of Political History at the University of Helsinki in February 2022. Her PhD dissertation is titled Legacies of the Komsomol: Government-Affiliated Youth Activism in post-Soviet Belarus and Russia.
At present, Dr. Silvan works primarily on state–society relations in Central Asian states, especially Kazakhstan, and Russia’s role in the Central Asian region. Her research articles have been published in the journals Europe-Asia Studies, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Studies and Idäntutkimus: Finnish Review of East European Studies.
Expertise
Domestic and foreign policy of Central Asian states, Belarus and Russia; authoritarian governance and social movements in the post-Soviet space
Degrees
PhD in Political History, University of Helsinki (2022). Ph.D. Dissertation Legacies of the Komsomol: Government-affiliated Youth Activism in post-Soviet Belarus and Russia was awarded with Distinction.
MA in International relations and European studies, Central European University (2015)
MA in Russian & Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow (2014)
Language skills
Finnish, English, Russian, Polish (working languages), Slovak, Swedish, German (passive knowledge)
Projects
Superregionalism and Contentious Connectivity in Asia