Public Scholarship

"How Putin Erases Dissidents and Critics." Journal of Democracy, online exclusive (2026).
How the Russian state neutralizes its critics beyond prison walls and beyond its borders, and what this machinery of erasure means for the exiled opposition. Analyzing Russia's new "civic death" laws, I show how the Kremlin has moved beyond agents and assassinations to weaponize its own bureaucracy: a public registry of exiled critics stripped of property rights, banking access, and consular services, designed to intimidate the quiet majority of émigrés rather than catch anyone. Drawing on the precedent of the Nansen passport, I argue that democracies must treat this autocratic legalism as transnational repression — and answer it with travel documents, humanitarian visas, and banking access for the deliberately undocumented.

"How Orbán's Fall Changed Serbia's Political Future." War on the Rocks (2026).
What the end of the Orbán era means for Serbia's political trajectory, for the Russian exiles, and authoritarian networks that have treated Belgrade as safe ground. Drawing on my fieldwork with Russian anti-war activists in Serbia, I describe the ambient repression they face, denied residency permits, "security risk" designations, and surveillance whose source, Serbian or Russian, can never quite be identified, as the operational doctrine of a captured state. With Vučić's Hungarian shield gone and early elections called, I argue the European Union has regained real leverage, and should use it, starting with protection for the exiled activists Belgrade expels.

"When Environmental Justice Becomes a Security Threat in Russia." Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University (2026).
How the Russian state reclassifies environmental grievance as a security matter and what happens to the Indigenous and local activists who name environmental harm. The essay traces how the machinery built to suppress political dissent has been turned on ecological claims, converting complaints about pollution and extraction into evidence of disloyalty. It connects my research on pollution disparities in Indigenous regions to the repression of those who resist them, showing that in extractivist autocracies, environmental harm and political silencing are two faces of the same governance.

"Silence After Exit: Why Russia's New Migrants Are Not Mobilizing." Russland-Analysen Nr. 476 (2026).
The findings of my Social Forces study, written for a German and EU policy readership: why exile has not produced an activist diaspora. The essay explains how fear travels with migrants, through family still in Russia, precarious legal status, and the long reach of the state, making silence a rational strategy rather than indifference. For European policymakers hoping exiles will form a democratic vanguard, it offers a caution: without security and durable status, exit does not produce voice.