Dr. Maxim Alyukov

Biography

Maxim Alyukov is a political sociologist with research interests in media, political communication, and political cognition with a specific focus on autocracies, particularly Russia. He is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester, associated with the Department of Russian and East-European Studies. Previously, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at King’s Russia Institute (2021 - 2023) and continues as a research associate. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki and an MA in Sociology from the European University at Saint-Petersburg. Alyukov's research employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how citizens comprehend the political world within authoritarian contexts and hybrid media environments. His PhD dissertation utilized cognitive political psychology to investigate media news reception in Russia's authoritarian regime. Currently, he is working on a project entitled 'Reflexive Propaganda: Authoritarian Political Communication in a Hybrid Information Environment' supported by the Leverhulme Trust. His scholarly contributions have appeared in journals such as Political Communication, Nature Human Behaviour, and Europe-Asia Studies. Additionally, he engages in public discourse through media commentary and has appeared on platforms such as BBC and Al Jazeera.

Research Interests