Maxim Alyukov

Maxim Alyukov is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Manchester's Department of Russian and East-European Studies, where he researches political communication in authoritarian contexts. He concurrently serves as a Research Associate at King's College London's Russia Institute. Alyukov holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki and an MA in Sociology from the European University at Saint-Petersburg.

His research employs mixed methods to analyze how citizens process political information under authoritarian regimes, with special focus on Russia's hybrid media ecosystem. Core interests include:

• Propaganda adaptation in digital environments
• Cognitive mechanisms of disinformation reception
• Media trust dynamics in closed societies
• Authoritarian resilience through communication

Publication analysis reveals concentrated focus on Russian media strategies during the Ukraine conflict, examining television propaganda, social media manipulation, and audience interpretation patterns across 5+ peer-reviewed studies.

Awarded competitive fellowships including:

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2023-2026)
• Aleksanteri Institute Visiting Fellowship (2025)
• Young Russian Scholars Helsinki Fellowship (2019)

Leads the Leverhulme-funded project Reflexive Propaganda: Authoritarian Communication in a Hybrid Media Environment combining computational analysis of social media data with behavioral experiments. Affiliated with the Public Sociology Laboratory and International Panel on the Information Environment, contributing expertise on post-Soviet media landscapes.