Tutkijatohtori
My work focuses on the political economy of post-communist transformations in the Baltic states, forms of resistance against neoliberal restructuring of East-Central Europe and concepts in historical materialism.
I completed my doctoral studies in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham in 2020. Funded by the Kone Foundation the post-doctoral project “The Enigma of Baltic Post-Communist Transformations” builds on the doctoral research to explore the conditions and processes undergirding the economic sociology of post-communist change in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Aided by historical materialist approach, I seek to unearth the vectors of continuity in the forms of class-constituted rule during Soviet and post-Soviet periods, study the processes conducive to the exasperation of geographical and social unevenness and centre analytical attention on intra- and inter-class conflicts that shaped the trajectories of so-called post-communist ‘transition’. This project sheds light on previously under-explored themes ranging from the transnational origins of neoliberalism in the Baltics as well as currency and monetary reforms, which served to institutionalise distinctive varieties of post-communist capitalisms in the region to labour resistance in the episodes of privatisation, the modalities of 2008-2011 crisis management operations, and more recently, the rise of far-right in Estonia.
The second strand comprising my current research programme revisits once-thriving historical materialist debates on the concepts of mode of production, domestic (household) labour and historiographies of capitalism. In the collaborative project “Revisiting the 'Mode of Production': Enduring Controversies over Labour, Exploitation and Historiographies of Capitalism” together with Kayhan Valadbaygi I delve into three inter-related thematic leitmotifs. First, we re-examine the mode of production concept by looking at several aspects of the debate including emergence and periodisation of capitalism, the analytical ‘schools’ of social formation/articulation as well as categories of ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ labour, ‘market dependence’ and ‘merchant capital’. Second, we adumbrate the complexity of the ‘domestic labour debate’, by approaching the latter through the lenses of the role of the body in the emergence of capitalism, the interiority between production and social reproduction spheres and household activities as productive or non-productive of value and surplus value. Third, the notion of uneven and combined development (U&CD) is evaluated. This is accomplished by considering the notion’s promises in studying the expansion of capitalism, its relation to the concepts of the mode of production and domestic labour, its capacity to write non-Eurocentric histories and the critique of its applications.
My articles, book reviews and commentaries have appeared in the Economic and Labour Relations Review, Europe-Asia Studies, Historical Materialism, Political Studies Review, Journal of Soviet & Post-Soviet Politics & Society, Progress in Political Economy and Jacobin.
Before coming to Helsinki, I taught political economy, international relations and post-Soviet politics at the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent.
Tel. +358504731922
