Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is a political scientist and an expert on Russian politics with the research agenda focused on political economy, social psychology and public opinion, authoritarian governance and legitimation, and centre-regional relations.
Gulnaz has recently published an award-winning The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020) that explores issues of authoritarian legitimation in Russia after the 2014 Crimea annexation. Her most recent book is The Afterlife of the Soviet Man: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus (Bloomsbury Press 2023) that presents the intellectual biography of selected writers and thinkers who have contributed to knowledge-building on the effects of communism on people living under communism.
Gulnaz has joined King's Russia Institute in 2013. She holds a PhD from the George Washington University, and speaks Russian, Tatar, and English.
