ANR-Lab research assistants successfully defend their thesis

Three ANR-Lab research assistants successfully defended their final qualification theses in the master's degree programs "Sociology of the Public Sphere and Digital Analytics" (Olga Molotkova, Daniil Kovalev) and "Applied Political Science" (Lika Kapustina).

Молоткова Ольга Андреевна

scientific supervisor – Maltseva Daria Vasilievna, head of the International Laboratory of Applied Network Research

What I remember most about my dissertation work was the support of my colleagues: comments, remarks, help. On some issues, I even managed to consult with employees from foreign universities. Thanks to the laboratory for the opportunity to be part of such a collaboration!

Collaboration Structures of Russian Sociologists: Network Analysis of Publications in the Web of Science Database 

The work develops the topic that already has a tradition of study in ANR-Lab — the study of scientific collaborations using the methodology of network analysis.

The Olga's dissertation analyzes articles on sociology by Russian authors from the Web of Science database for the period from 1992 to 2024. The characteristics of publication activity and collaboration of Russian sociologists are assessed, and the most stable groups of authors ("invisible colleges") in modern sociology are considered.

As a result, the fragmentation of the community characteristic of the social sciences is revealed, although the trends show the opposite — over time, the collaborative work of Russian sociologists is intensifying.

Ковалёв Даниил Игоревич

scientific supervisor – Davydov Sergey Gennadievich, senior researcher of the International Laboratory for Social Integration Studies and analyst of the International Laboratory for Applied Network Research

The defense went very well. The key aspect of the defense was that I tried to supplement the theory of deurbanization based on the results of empirical research. And the committee highly appreciated this.

Motives and Practices of Counterurbanization in User Publications on the Online Platform YouTube 

Daniil studied the motives and practices of deurbanization by analyzing Russian- and English-language videos using multimodal topic modeling and semantic network analysis. The results of the work revealed that in times of crisis (pandemic, military conflict), moving to the village is perceived as therapeutic mobility and is based on the oppositions of "city - village", "individual - community". In addition, Russian-language content focuses on the practical arrangement of everyday life, and English-language content - on the transformation of the romanticized image of the "rural idyll" into material practices of energy and food independence.

Lika Kapustina

scientific supervisor – Svetlana Vasilievna Zhuchkova, deputy director of the Institute of Education

The Role of Professional Background of Judges in Protest Cases Sentencing in Modern Russia 

As part of her master's thesis, Lika examined how judges' professional backgrounds are related to the nature of their decisions. Most existing studies examine this relationship in the context of criminal proceedings (finding, for example, that judges with experience in the prosecutor's office are more likely to sentence defendants to harsher punishments). Lika focused on administrative cases involving protests in Russia - and found small but statistically significant effects of judges' professional backgrounds even in political cases. Lika plans to continue working on the effects of judges' professional backgrounds in her graduate studies.