Mari-Liis Jakobson
Principal Investigator, 2023-27
mari-liis.jakobson@tlu.ee
Mari-Liis Jakobson is an associate professor of Political Sociology at Tallinn University and the PI of the SIDESTREAM project. Her research interests relate to populism, radical right and migration and transnationalism politics and policy. Her work has been published in several internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals, such as European Political Science, Contemporary Politics, Politics and Governance or Comparative Migration Studies. She is also co-editor of the book Anxieties of Migration and Integration in Turbulent Times (Springer, 2023). Previously, she has also served as a researcher for the Twinning project MIRNet and worked as a researcher at the Estonian national contact point of the European Migration Network (2016-2019) and as a visiting research fellow at the MacMillan Center, Yale University (2019-2020).
https://www.etis.ee/CV/Mari-Liis_Jakobson/eng/
Anastassia Tuuder
Research assistant, 2023-27
anastassia.tuuder@tlu.ee
She holds an MA degree in Political Science from Tallinn University and her research interests include ethnopolitics and identity. In her master thesis she focused on both themes in the context of the city of Narva, where the Russian-speaking population constitutes majority being otherwise minority in Estonian context. In the SIDESTREAM project, she works on EKRE.
Lisa Zanotti
Researcher, 2024-25
Zanotti-Anderloni(at)ceu.edu
Lisa Zanotti is an assistant professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, Chile; an adjunct researcher at the Center for the Study of Social Conflict and Cohesion; and a researcher at the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right (Ultra-Lab). Previously, she held a visiting position at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain). She holds a PhD in political science from the Diego Portales University and in humanities from the University of Leiden (Netherlands). Her area of specialisation is comparative politics, with a specific focus on topics such as party systems, populism and radicalisation processes, particularly concerning the far right in both Latin America and Western Europe. In the SIDESTREAM project, she researches VOX.
https://globalforum.ceu.edu/lisa-zanotti/
Marina Vahter
Junior researcher, 2023-27
marina.vahter@tlu.ee
Marina Vahter is a PhD candidate and a junior researcher at Tallinn University. Her research interests relate to the relationship between ethics and politics. In the SIDESTREAM project, she researches Swedish Democrats.
https://www.etis.ee/CV/Marina_Vahter/est
Tõnis Saarts
Researcher, 2023-27
tenissos@tlu.ee
Tõnis Saarts is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at Tallinn University’s School of Governance, Law, and Society and works as a research associate for the SIDESTREAM project. His research interests include political parties, party systems, social cleavages, democratization in Central and Eastern Europe, and the challenges contemporary political parties face in modern democracies1. In addition to his academic work, Saarts is a regular commentator on political affairs for various media outlets and has contributed numerous articles to the public discourse on Estonian politics. In the SIDESTREAM project, he researches EKRE.
https://www.etis.ee/CV/T%C3%B5nis_Saarts/eng/
Sebastian Umpierrez de Reguero
Postdoctoral researcher, 2023-27
Postdoctoral Fellow at Tallinn University’s School of Governance, Law, and Society. His research focuses on party politics, transnational populism, and electoral studies, with a particular emphasis on migrant electoral behaviour. Sebastián has published extensively in renowned journals such as Representation, Frontiers in Political Science, European Political Science, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. He is also a member of the CORE Latam project on Constitutional Reasoning in Latin America and has held various academic positions, including Visiting Scholar at Casa Grande University (Ecuador), Associate Researcher at Diego Portales University (Chile), European University Institute (Italy) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain).