Biography
Dmitry graduated from the Moscow School of Social and Economic Science (MSSES), affiliated to the University of Manchester in 2010 with a Master’s in Sociology (with distinction). His thesis explored the topics of emerging of rules and social order in practices of communication in Russian Wikipedia on-line community. Before this Dmitry also received a specialised degree in History of Arts and Diploma in the field of Cartography.
Since his studies at the MSSES, he been interested in the Sociology of space and urban studies, as well as in insights which are provided by such theories as sociology of knowledge and new institutionalism. So in 2013, Dmitry decided to change his field of activity to academia and won admission to the Russian Institute at King's College.
Before this for more than 10 years Dmitry worked for the International Society Memorial (well-known Russian Human-Rights NGO) first as an IT specialist and then as a project co-ordinator and development director. His responsibilities were allocated in strategic planning, fund-raising, project management and research.
He has also taken part in various educational projects for the children. Since 2012, he has been a project director at “The Summer School of Theoretical and Molecular Biology” and a member of the Advisory Council of Competitions at the non-profit Dynasty Foundation. In 2013 Dmitry was engaged in educational project of the Yegor Gaidar Foundation, and before that for a few years served as a member of organizing committee of the popular-science project “Pushchino Winter’s School”.
Dmitry has lectured in auditoriums for children at the State Polytechnical Museum and worked as a member of curators’ board of the Moscow International Book Festival.
Doctoral Research
Destructive Development: How Informality and Rent-seeking Behaviour Constrain the Process of Urban Change in Post-Soviet Moscow.
Research Interests
The object of Dmitry's research project is to critically examine the practices that have formed in architecture, city planning, and the construction industry in Russia over the past 20-25 years. From his preliminary point of view the ability of Russia’s cities to compete on a global scale has been compromised by “destructive development” – a phenomenon evident both in the haphazard rebuilding of city centers, leading to a loss of historic heritage, and in the planning and realization of residential districts on the city’s outskirts and suburbs. Other important factors are corruption, the deteriorating quality of infrastructure, and the need to work with structures created within the context of the Soviet planned economy.
Dmitry assumes that the issues listed above can be analyzed using the theories of “urban regimes” and path dependence, though they may take on different forms and may be associated both with market failures and failures in economic and cultural policy. The principal aim of this project is to discover the hidden causes and mechanisms of the reproduction of the existing and to evaluate potential avenues of change.
Supervisors
- Dr Marc Berenson
- Dr Sam Greene