Visiting Scholars

Since 2016, I have been doing research into disinformation and conspiracy theories, including that of the ethnic minorities. I find it crucial to recognize that while conspiracy theories are global, they vary locally, and their variants depend on societal structures and historical contexts. In my research, I concentrate on Russian speakers in Estonia, a heterogeneous group, whose exposure to disinformation varies greatly, yet persists (which is true about any minority or majority group worldwide nowadays). I explore the reasons and vulnerabilities behind this group’s conspiratorial thinking and analyze other narratives that, as I discover through ethnography, tend to gravitate toward conspiracy theories, from humor to supernatural beliefs.

In addition to the academic research, I have practiced very productive interventions for different age, ethnic, professional, and social groups in Estonia by doing seminars about conspiracy theories, most often at high schools. These projects will continue, and to not only intervene, but also to learn more from these opportunities for intervention, I am in the process of designing the study of the Russophone adolescents’ repertoire of conspiracy theories. This includes the methodological design (thorough planning of focus groups and individual interviews), but most importantly dealing with challenges conditioned by the young age and the ethnic minority status of those under study. Schools and education are central for addressing the problem of disinformation and training students in critical, rational thinking have shown the best effects. Sharing the results of my ongoing research into conspiracy theories among Russophones in Estonia as well as shaping its newer directions for it will be the aim of my visit to Stanford University.

Anastasiya Astapova is an Associate Professor of Folkloristics (University of Tartu, Estonia) and a member of Estonian Young Academy of Sciences. Previously, she was interested in the research of post-socialist humor and rumor under authoritarianism (which, along with other publications, resulted in her monograph Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). In 2016-2020, Astapova was a board member of the COST project “Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories”, within which she published a co-edited Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends (Routledge, 2020) and a co-authored Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries (Routledge, 2020), among other works. Astapova is one of the founding members of CONNOR: Nordic Network of Conspiracy Theory Research. At the moment, Astapova is a principal investigator in Estonian Science Foundation project “COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Contents, Channels, and Target Groups”, a member of Horizon project DELIAH: Democratic Literacy and Humor”, and a member of ERC grant “Conspirations: Conflicts over Conspiracy Theories”.

Jonathan Brunstedt is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University, specializing in modern Russia and Eastern Europe, with a focus on the aftermath and legacy of armed conflict. His research centers on how societies remember war and navigate the tensions between idealized pasts and contemporary social, political, and geopolitical realities. He is the author of The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR (Cambridge University Press), named one of Foreign Affairs’ “Best Books of the Year.”

Jonathan’s current project, Every Generation Has a War of Its Own: Soviet Victory Culture and Cold War Interventionism, explores the transnational dimensions of Soviet memory culture, revealing how triumphalist narratives of the victory over fascism in 1945 shaped the Communist Party’s global ambitions and interventionist foreign policies. At the same time, it examines how this victory culture clashed with the harsh realities of defeat and humiliation in war, most powerfully in Afghanistan. At CREEES, Jonathan will complete an article manuscript based on this project while finalizing archival research for the book at the Hoover Institution.

The radical right is usually defined as anti-pluralist: it values social homogeneity above all else, and in some cases even seeks to punish otherness: for example, by restricting the rights of minorities, people from an immigrant background or LGBT+ people. At the same time, there is a growing trend of seemingly mildening rhetoric towards select minority groups among radical right politicians and parties in many parts of the Western world. Even candidates from minority backgrounds are increasingly to be found in the ranks of such parties. The aim of my visit is to work with the Stanford labs on an experimental survey instrument to see what effect such strategies have on support for the radical right, and whether such shifts in discourse also help to increase support for right-wing politicians among minority voters, or whether these are more likely to win over wavering majority voters. I also hope to develop contacts with researchers there who are exploring similar issues and to plan further cooperation.

Mari-Liis Jakobson is Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the School for Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, and Principal Investigator of the starter grant project “Breaking Into the Mainstream While Remaining Radical: Sidestreaming Strategies on the Populist Radical Right “. Her research interests relate to populism, radical right and migration and transnationalism politics and policy. Her work has been published in several internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals, such as European Political Science, Contemporary Politics, Politics and Governance or Comparative Migration Studies. She is also co-editor of Anxieties of Migration and Integration in Turbulent Times (Springer, 2023).

Ilaria Sicari is a MSCA Postdoctoral Research fellow. Her research project is devoted to the tamizdat (‘published abroad’), a term that refers to Soviet and Eastern European texts unpublished in the Eastern bloc and clandestinely smuggled and published in the West. Being the tamizdat an alternative transnational publishing practice, focusing on the agency of socio-cultural actors (activists of social movements, dissidents, editors, translators, literary agents, critics, diplomats etc.) involved in its production, circulation and reception, it will be possible to outline a comparative intellectual history of the Cultural Cold War in order to demonstrate that state and non-state book diplomacy was fundamental in avoiding the cultural isolation of the two blocs and in promoting the cross-border circulation of knowledge and ideas. 

At CREEES Ilaria will carry out her research under the supervision of Professor Norman Naimark and, during her visiting period at Stanford, she plans to realize a geo-spatial digital visualization of data in collaboration with the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA).