Matthew Blackburn

Matthew Blackburn is a Senior Researcher in NUPI's Research Group on Russia, Asia and International Trade. His main research agenda addresses the politics of contemporary autocracies in Russia and Eurasia, including both domestic politics and interstate relations. He has researched contemporary autocratic legitimation and popular responses to state discourses, with a particular focus on how regimes mobilise on the ideational level and cope with the challenges of nationalist and populist opposition. He also researches subnational variation in Russian society and regional politics, and studies how contemporary authoritarian regimes evolve, alternating between periods of stabilisation, normalisation and mobilisation.

He is currently developing project proposals on comparative authoritarian politics, displacement and emigration, and new competition for influence among the former-Soviet states in light of the war in Ukraine.

He is also an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University.