On 3 June 2025, Aytalina Kulichkina successfully defended her dissertation, The Dynamics of Online Protest and Repression in Authoritarian Contexts, in which she offers a nuanced examination of how dissent and control unfold and interact on social media in repressive political systems.

In the presence of her dissertation committee – Silke Adam and Sophie Lecheler – and under the supervision of Annie Waldherr and Nicola Righetti, Aytalina provided a compelling account of how digital communication platforms simultaneously serve as instruments of political mobilization and mechanisms of state repression. Her research was met with strong interest and critical acclaim by the committee members.

Her cumulative dissertation combines time-series analysis, coordination detection, network analysis, topic modeling, and agent-based simulations to trace the evolving dynamics of protest and repression in online spheres. One of the key studies from her dissertation is available open access here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448241254126

We warmly congratulate Aytalina on her successful defense. From 1 July 2025, she will continue her academic journey as a postdoctoral researcher in the CCL within the Horizon Europe project WHAT-IF: Advanced Simulations for Testing the Effect of the Information Environment on the Functioning of Democracy. We look forward to her continued contributions to our team and to the broader field of political communication research.