Dr Joanna Szostek

Joanna joined the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme as an associate fellow in 2020. She is also a senior lecturer (associate professor) in political communication at the University of Glasgow.

She has conducted extensive research in Ukraine and Russia, with a focus on the media and public opinion. Her main interests include the media’s role in relations between states, media-related threats to security, and the development of the media and civil society in unconsolidated democracies.

In recent years, Joanna has led research projects investigating the reception of competing political narratives among audiences in Ukraine, and the use of local, national and foreign/transnational media in Ukrainian border regions. These projects received funding from the European Commission and the British Academy. Findings from these projects are published in leading international peer-reviewed journals.

Joanna has given numerous interviews about Russia’s war on Ukraine to the national and international news media, including BBC Newsnight, BBC Scotland, France 24 and The New York Times. Her professional experience includes several years at BBC Monitoring and many years of living and working in Russia and Ukraine. She has also spent time on secondment with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and she holds a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford.