Dr Diana Rafailova

Welcome!

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the ERC-funded project "MoveMeRU" based at the Centre for East European and International Studies and a visiting senior fellow at SCRIPTS, Free University of Berlin.

I obtained a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) in February 2024. My dissertation was awarded the 2024 Linz-Rokkan Prize for the best EUI dissertation in Political Sociology.

My interests include political regimes, authoritarian attitudinal legacies, and political preferences. In my dissertation, I examined the effects of political regimes on education quality, learning outcomes, and critical thinking skills. My current postdoctoral research focuses on political socialization and preferences for democracy among long-standing Russian-immigrant families in liberal democracies.

I employ both quantitative and qualitative data in my work. My dissertation utilized extensive time-series cross-sectional data and large-scale cross-national surveys. As a postdoctoral researcher, I have led focus group data collection, conducting interviews with families from both Russian and non-Russian backgrounds in Estonia, Germany, and Canada.