Liliia Sablina is currently completing her doctoral degree in Political Science at the Central European University in Vienna. Her research focuses on the right-wing mobilization of Russian-speaking groups in Germany. She is an author of multiple academic publications on the topic.  She is also a former research fellow at the Zentrum für Osteuropa und Internationale Studien (ZOiS) in Germany, and the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) in Norway.

Research interests:

• Digital authoritarianism
• Russian kin-state politics
• diaspora mobilization

Current project: 

'Everyday Ties and White Imaginaries: How Russian-speaking Migrants Joined the German Far Right.' 

In this project, Liliia Sablina explores the individual pathways and mobilization patterns of Russian-speakers residing in Germany who decided to engage with three forms of mobilization: anti-refugee mobilization in 2016-2017, anti-vaccination manifestations in 2020-2021, and pro-war mobilization in 2022-2023. The current research project conceptualizes a multi-layered theory of mobilization that includes the kin-state mobilizing perceived minorities abroad, the meso-level or activists facilitating groupness and radicalization, as well as the micro-level represented by individual engagement with the mobilization movements. A special role in this project is given to the role that social media plays in these mobilization networks and the way in which authoritarian states tend to utilize it.

Selected publications: 

Sablina, L. (2023). The role of social media in facilitating minority mobilisation: The Russian‐language pro‐war movement in Germany amid the invasion of Ukraine. Nations and Nationalism.

Sablina, L. (2021). “We should stop the Islamisation of Europe!”: Islamophobia and right-wing radicalism of the Russian-speaking Internet users in Germany. Nationalities Papers, 49(2), 361-374.