My name is Liudmila (Mila) Listrovaya, I am a sociologist of power, inequality, and the environment, studying how authoritarian regimes engineer unequal life chances and how those dynamics travel across borders and ecosystems. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan 

The first strand focuses on environmental inequality, justice, and environmental politics under authoritarian rule, where resource extraction functions as both tools and outcomes of governance. I document how environmental burdens are concentrated in ethnically diverse and Indigenous regions and how state narratives and regulatory discretion normalize harm while suppressing resistance and science-based knowledge. 

Publications include an article in Society & Natural Resources (2024), Environmental Sociology (2025), Environmental Sociology (forthcoming). I am currently working on an invited contribution on climate obstruction in authoritarian states as a part of the special issue in Climatic Change.

In partnership with exiled environmental activists and Indigenous associations, I work on on developing research linking environmental justice to debates on authoritarian environmentalism, clarifying when extractive projects entrench center–periphery hierarchies and where communities can carve out constrained spaces for voice.

The second strand investigates the human consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Through multi-sited fieldwork with Russian relokanti, I show how “extraterritorial authoritarianism” travels with migrants, encouraging strategic silence in both public and private life; a solo-authored article from this project appears in Social Forces. 

Currently I am developing a book manuscript on adaptation, epistemic violence, transnational repression, and civic voice among Russian political migrants that moved to Georgia and Serbia. I am also preparing an invited contribution for the Migration Studies journal.

Complementing the qualitative research, my quantitative study of male mortality across Russia’s regions (2018–2023) demonstrates that wartime mobilization amplified existing inequalities: economically deprived areas and legally designated Indigenous homelands experienced disproportionate post-2022 increases in male mortality. This work is currently under review in one of the top sociology journals.