The team

Jan Matti Dollbaum studied in Heidelberg, Mainz, London and St Petersburg, and received his PhD from Bremen University in 2020 for a dissertation on protest development in several Russian regions. He has published on protest and party politics in Eastern and Western Europe with a focus on Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and, more recently, Moldova. Jan's work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, Perspectives on Politics, and other places. You can find a full list of publications on his personal website.

Jan Goedeking has studied political science in Heidelberg with semesters abroad in Kraków and Leuven. In his master’s thesis he analyzed why people vote for a new party in Central and Eastern European elections. During his PhD research he will focus on anti-establishment parties and politics in the project countries of Ukraine and Moldova as well as in Central and Eastern Europe more generally. He wants to examine the reasons for anti-establishment party voting in more detail, the effects that these parties actually have on policies and whether region-specific patterns can be identified with regard to these issues.

Polina Klochko is a PhD researcher interested in Ukrainian and Russian politics and media studies. In 2023, Polina graduated from an International Master programme in Central and East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies co-funded by the European Commission. Polina obtained her master's degree from the University of Tartu, Estonia; the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom; and Jagiellonian University in Poland. Polina's master's thesis concerned the coverage of migration from the Middle East in the Polish liberal newspaper "Gazeta Wyborcza," following her research passion for media studies. Within the research group, Polina focuses on public interest representation and policy debates within Ukraine's legislature.