I am an Associate Professor of Sociology and Political Science at L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University (ENU) in Astana, Kazakhstan. My work sits at the intersection of computational social science and post-Soviet studies, and I use quantitative and computational methods — NLP and embeddings, spatial econometrics, survival analysis, interrupted time-series analysis — to study digital media, political communication, and urban life across Central Asia and the wider post-Soviet space.

Research interests

My research spans several connected threads:

• Digital media and political communication — how platforms like Telegram and VKontakte shape political discourse, legitimacy, and mobilization, including work on Telegram channels during Kazakhstan’s January 2022 protests and on delegitimization dynamics in the Russian internet.
• Urban sociology — spatial diffusion, territorial stigmatization, and access to urban goods and services (housing, healthcare, retail), using large-scale geocoded and marketplace data from Kazakhstani cities.
• Post-Soviet institutional and political sociology — bureaucratic practice, state power, and everyday life in Central Asia and Russia, informed by theoretical traditions including Bourdieu, Lipsky, DiMaggio & Powell, and Illouz.

My published work includes studies in Russian Politics, Journal of Eurasian Studies, Global Perspectives, Media, War & Conflict, Geojournal and a Scopus-indexed monograph, alongside ongoing projects on state-society relations, digital platforms, and computational approaches to social and political phenomena in Kazakhstan and beyond.

Get in touch

I’m always interested in collaboration on computational social science, post-Soviet studies, and digital media research. You can reach me by email, or find my publications via Google Scholar, ORCID, ResearchGate, or Scopus (links in the sidebar).