Dima Kortukov 

MEMBER-AT-LARGE CANDIDATE

Dima Kortukov is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, and a scholar of Russian and post-Soviet politics, authoritarian regimes, democratization, and ideology. He holds a PhD from Indiana University (2022). His work has appeared in Democratization, Comparative Politics, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, International Studies Review, Problems of Post-Communism, and other journals. He is currently completing a book manuscript, Perestroika to Perdition: Governance, Elections, and the End of the USSR. The book offers an innovative account of Soviet collapse, arguing that Gorbachev’s political reforms, intended to improve governance, inadvertently undermined the foundations of elite loyalty to the Communist regime. His other work in progress further explores contemporary Russian politics, examining the governance of artificial intelligence, conspiracy theories about Putin’s alleged use of body doubles, and the regime’s approaches to elite training.  

He has been an active member of ASEEES since graduate school, presenting at the annual convention regularly since 2017, organizing panels and serving as a panel discussant on numerous occasions. He is also a recipient of the ASEEES Dissertation Research Grant (2019), which was instrumental in supporting his archival research in Russia. As an ASEEES board member, he will prioritize the interests of early-career and interdisciplinary scholars navigating a shrinking job market, colleagues whose research has been disrupted by Russia’s war on Ukraine, and those working to keep area studies intellectually vibrant and institutionally supported at a time when its future is far from guaranteed. He will work to make ASEEES an organization that not only promotes excellent scholarship but also equips its members, at every career stage and institution type, with the resources and support they need to sustain meaningful careers in the field.