Communication scholar Stanislav Budnitsky joins the Centre from 1 August 2021 until 31 January 2022 as a Postdoc Research Fellow in the research group on 'Legitimation and delegitimation in global cooperation'. During his stay, Budnitsky will focus on his ongoing research into the relationship between nationalism and digital technologies, including the book project, 'Russia's Digital Sovereignty: National Identity and Global Internet Governance.'
Stanislav Budnitsky’s research explores the nexus of culture, global communication, and digital technologies. 'Russia’s Digital Sovereignty' illuminates how state nationalisms inform global internet governance, geopolitical debates about the global internet’s governing principles. The project demonstrates how Russia’s great power identity narrative has underlain its challenge to the perceived US digital hegemony under the banner of ‘internet sovereignty.’ Comparatively, Budnitsky shows how Estonia’s national identity project of 'returning to Europe' after the Soviet rule has directed its support for the US-led 'internet freedom' agenda.
The Centre expects the project to demonstrate the continuing critical role of nationalism in global politics. A focus on the relationship between the state and non-state civil society actors in shaping the respective country’s approaches to the global internet is especially promising in this context. 'Global Governance of the Internet' constitutes one of the Centre's four policy fields.
Prior to joining the Centre, Stanislav Budnitsky was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Russian and East European Institute and a Visiting Scholar at the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 2018-20, Budnitsky was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he was a fellow at the Oxford University Media Policy Summer Institute, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and Stanford University U.S.-Russia Forum, among others. Budnitsky’s academic writings have appeared in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, Internet Policy Review, and an edited collection, 'The Net and the Nation-State,' from Cambridge University Press.
Stanislav Budnitsky received his PhD in Communication from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. This research was supported by the Government of Ontario, Hamburg’s Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Foundation, and the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. Budnitsky holds Master’s degrees in Nationalism Studies from Budapest’s Central European University and in Journalism from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. Before graduate studies, he was a Moscow-based media writer and producer.
