Team
The ERC research group is comprised of the Principal Investigator Professor Florian Toepfl, multiple predoctoral researchers, and a series of visiting fellows who will join the project for limited periods of time.
Principal Investigator

Professor Florian Toepfl
Professor Florian Toepfl is the Principal Investigator of the RUSINFORM project. He co-ordinates the research efforts conducted in the four work packages.
Research Associates & PhD students

Daria Kravets
Daria Kravets is a Research Associate and PhD student, primarily responsible for conducting the research efforts of work package 3. Her research interests are in the areas of political communication, algorithmic bias, and computational methods.

Anna Ryzhova
Anna Ryzhova is a Research Associate and PhD student in the RUSINFORM project. Her main research focus lies on the work package 1. Her research interests include political communication, audience research and news critical literacy.

Arista Beseler
Arista Beseler is a Research Associate and PhD student in the project RUSINFORM. Digital communcation is her main research interest, with a focus on audience participation and the public discourse about potentially controversial topics.

Julia Kling
Julia Kling is a Research Associate and PhD student in the RUSINFORM project. Her research interests are in the areas of Russia’s Informational influence, as well as transnational audience research and computational methods.

Serge Poliakoff
Serge Poliakoff is a Research Associate and PhD student in the RUSINFORM project. His research interests are in the areas of Russia's Informational influence, dis-/misinformation, propaganda, fake news and computational methods.