Aliaksandr Herasimenka

Dr Aliaksandr Herasimenka (@alesherasimenka) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He studies how digital media is used in authoritarian countries. He specialises in social movements, political organising, information manipulation, computational propaganda and data science.

Dr Herasimenka completed his doctorate at the Westminster School of Media and Communication, University of Westminster. His dissertation investigated how digital dissidents used social media platforms to organise and disseminate information. This work focused on anti-authoritarian movements in Belarus and Russia and discussed modern forms of political organising and leadership. The dissertation argued that successful anti-authoritarian movements were able to adapt to the challenges of surveillance, persecution and censorship by dispersing their organisational structures and using local and alternative platforms to disseminate messages.

Before pursuing his doctorate, Dr Herasimenka worked as a journalist and an editor, as well as a media coordinator in an international NGO. He was a research associate at University of Westminster and taught at UCL, University of Portsmouth, University of Westminster and Middlesex University.

His work was featured by international media such as BBC, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Times Radio, Politico, DW, ABC, Financial Times and others.