Teaching

Instructor at New York University

Russian Politics since 1991
(graduate seminar, POL-GA 3501 | INTRL-GA 1731 | RUSSN-GA 1001)

• Syllabus 
• Synopsis

  Are we doomed? Is the future – tyranny, corruption, and war? Is the nature of great power competition fatal for democracy, the rule of law, and liberalism? And why Vladimir Putin, a mediocre mid-level secret police agent from the backwaters of the Cold War, came to symbolize the urgency of these questions in the early 2020s?

  These are just some of the questions we will cover in the Russian Politics class. Our discussion will be organized around a select few turning points that determined the trajectory of the Russian journey and its global consequences, with an eye also on how social science informed – and learnt from – these developments. In the process, we will learn a lot about Russia, even more about how democracies and autocracies work and fail, and, simultaneously, will unlearn many myths that continue to surround all these subjects, starting with the claim that Putin was inevitable and is irreplaceable.

  Come to learn which lessons Putin took from oligarchs who engineered his rise to power, which from Stalin, and which from his former comrades-in-arms at the KGB foreign intelligence directorate. Stay to discover how Russians live aside from Putin and what are the prospects of bottom-up democratization.

• Poster 1 | Poster 2

Photo by Vladimir Fedorenko, RIA.

Teaching Assistant at New York University

• Comparative Politics (Eastern Europe, Prof. Joshua Tucker)
• Comparative Politics (Western Europe, Prof. Michael Laver)
• International Relations (Prof. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita)
• International Politics (Profs. Jennifer Larson, Shanker Satyanath)
• Cultures and Context: Russia between East and West (Prof. Yanni Kotsonis, History)

Teaching Assistant at Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia)

• Institutional Economics (Prof. Marina Odintsova)

Guest Lectures

• Princeton CS "Interface "Russian Digital Disinformation in the U.S.: 2020 vs. 2016"
• VT PSCI/IS 3116 "Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation"
• Stanford INTPOL 221 "Data Localization Laws in Russia & Global Internet Control"
• Stanford INTPOL 253C "Computational Propaganda in Action: The Use of Twitter Bots in and by Russia"
• Stanford INTPOL 321 "Disinformation Campaigns: Action and Detection"
• NYU POL 700 "Media Control and the Rise of Political Bots: From Russia with a Retweet"
• NYU POL 700 "Domestic Origins of the Russian Foreign Policy"
• NYU POL 500 "Politics of Russian Economic Reform"
• NYU HIST 510 "Winners Take All and Lose Everything: Russia from Yeltsin to Putin"