Olena Nikolayenko is a recepient of the 2007-2009 post-doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her research interests include comparative democratization, public opinion, social movements, youth, and corruption. In her dissertation, she analyzed political support among the first post-Soviet generation grown up without any direct experience with communism in Russia and Ukraine. She has a PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada.

At CDDRL, she examined why some youth movements are more successful than others in applying methods of nonviolent resistance to mobilize the population in non-democratic regimes. She has recently conducted fieldwork in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Selected Publications

• 2008. "Contextual Effects on Historical Memory: Soviet Nostalgia among Post-Soviet Adolescents." Communist and Post-Communist Studies 41(2): 243-259
• 2008. "Life-Cycle, Generational and Period Effects on Protest Potential in Yeltsin's Russia." Canadian Journal of Political Science 41(2): 437-460
• 2007. "The Revolt of the Post-Soviet Generation: Youth Movements in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine." Comparative Politics 39(2): 169-188
•  2007. "Web Cartoons in a Closed Society: Animal Farm as an Allegory of Belarus." PS: Political Science and Politics 40(2): 307-310
• 2004. "Press Freedom during the 1994 and 1999 Presidential Elections in Ukraine: A Reverse Wave?" Europe-Asia Studies 56(5): 661-686