CCSD Post Doctoral Researchers

Rebecca Adeline Johnston is a historian of Soviet culture and power with an interdisciplinary focus on disinformation in the Russian and broader post-Soviet space. She holds a doctoral degree from the Department of History at the University of Texas-Austin. Her dissertation, “The End of Illusion: Putting Culture to Work in the Post-Stalin Era, 1953-1964,” utilizes archival materials from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to examine changing conceptions and utilizations of culture in Soviet politics and society during the post-Stalin era. Rebecca has worked extensively as an editor and translator of Russian mass media and within the field of international human rights. Most recently, she held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies and National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, both at UT-Austin. She has also previously worked as project lead on the Post-Soviet States: People, Power, and Assets oral history archive at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Her work has been supported externally by the ASEEES Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Fellowship Program and National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Her current writing project examines historical narrative in contemporary Russian cinema as a vehicle for state-sponsored disinformation.

• Publication: "In Defense of Historical Truth: The Second Front of Russia’s Information War," which is a chapter in Modern Russian Film as a Battleground in Russia’s Information War (Alexander Rojavin, ed.; Routledge July 2024)
• Invited conference: Hoover History Lab at Stanford University, “How Did We Get Here? Understanding the Long-Term Trajectories of Russia and China”  (we didn't have individual presentation titles) (June 2024)
• Project presentation: "Russian Culture Mobilized for War" at the 2023-2024 Digital Humanities Fellows Symposium, for KU's Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities (May 2024)
• Invited conference: 2024 KU Security Conference, "The Russo-Ukrainian War and Global Human Security." Presented on panel "The War, Disinformation, and Global Influence Campaigns" (April 2024)
• Invited talk: "Culture and Knowledge in Russian National Security," for annual Global Economics Symposium for International Officers with U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth (November 2023)
• Invited talk: "Social and Political Cleavages in the Russian Federation," for the Today in International Politics Speaker Series (October 2023)
• Conference participant: Computational Cybersecurity in Compromised Environments (C3E) 2023 Workshop at the Florida Institute of Technology (September 2023)

"Ever since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Russian state has attempted to operationalize its own domestic cultural sphere to facilitate military success. With a network of tens of thousands of state-dependent institutions at its disposal, Russia’s leadership has continually banked on its “cultural front” to achieve what weapons have not. This project will analyze and visualize the different ways that the state has attempted to weaponize culture over the course of the war. On one hand, culture has the power to encourage individuals to take concrete action. On the other, it can shape meanings, narratives, and affective experiences. That latter power, in the grandest aspirations of Russia’s leadership, can help Russia to absorb Ukraine into a singular civilization. The digital showcase resulting from this project will help us to reach a more comprehensive understanding of how Russia has conducted this war and to what ends."