Alona Shestopalova

Dr Alona Shestopalova is a non-resident fellow at the ICDS and a senior researcher at the Centre for Information Resilience (UK), specialising in political communication. Her broader research interests include identity and memory conflicts, the role of emotions in politics, and the information security of Central and Eastern European countries. Her collaboration with the ICDS dates back to 2021, when she became the first recipient of the ICDS Tallinn Scholarship and briefly joined the centre as a visiting fellow. Previously, she also worked as a freelance journalist for various Ukrainian media outlets.

She holds a master’s degree in political science from Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Ukraine) and earned her PhD degree from the University of Hamburg (Germany) with a dissertation on Russian hostile communication related to Euromaidan, the occupation of Crimea, and the war in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. This research formed the basis of her book, From Screens to Battlefields: Tracing the Construction of Enemies on Russian Television (ibidem Press, 2024). One of the key aspects explored in the book is the demonisation and dehumanisation of Ukrainians on Russian TV.