Joanna Szostek holds a Mellon postdoctoral research fellowship at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2013. Her research revolves around the post-Soviet news media: her doctoral thesis investigated factors which shape reporting about Russia in Ukraine and Belarus and the behaviour of Russian ‘news exporters’. Her latest project explores (geo)political perceptions of ‘the West’ among Russian university students and how such perceptions are shaped by direct (e.g. travel, acquaintances) and mediated (e.g. via TV, the internet and education) contact with Western countries. She has spent many years living and working in Russia, where she previously worked as a senior monitoring journalist for the BBC.
