I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Kansas. I am also a research affiliate at New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics. I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2022, and I was a Postdoctoral Scholar in Russian Politics at Columbia University from 2022 to 2024.

I study how propaganda helps authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin to maintain public support, how Russian propaganda spreads in the United States, and how we can help citizens treat propaganda and disinformation critically. In other work, I investigate political elites, institutions, and trust in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, as well as the legacies of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

My research has been published or is forthcoming in American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Communication, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Problems of Post-Communism, the Journal of Legislative Studies, and East European Politics and Societies. See my recent policy memo for PONARS Eurasia. My analysis and commentary have also appeared in The Washington Post, on PBS NewsHour, in The Financial Times, Newsweek, HuffingtonPost, USA Today, Politifact, Euronews, and other major media outlets.

Before graduate school, I worked as a journalist and an editor in Russian independent media, covering politics and technology.

You can contact me at shirikov@ku.edu or follow me on Twitter and Google Scholar.