I am a quantitative social scientist at the University of Exeter. I study immigration, ethnic groups and inequalities in education, in Russia and in the UK, using statistical analysis of survey, administrative, social media and experimental data.

I am also a deputy head of the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy and Anthropology in Exeter.

Recently completed papers:

1. Using digital trace data in Russian studies.

This is a review of the literature that used digital trace data to study political communication, education, labour markets in Russia, as well as the Russo-Ukrainian war and its consequences, in the context when traditional data collection has become more difficult.

Bessudnov, A. (2024). “Using digital trace data in Russian studies”. SocArXiv. July 16. [Open access]

2. Russian military fatalities in Ukraine.

We used the official Russian mortality statistics to estimate excess male mortality in 2022-23 due to the Russo-Ukrainian war. The number of Russian fatalities in 2022-23 was about 60,000: a very significant death toll but lower than sometimes reported in the media.

D.Kobak, A.Bessudnov, A.Ershov, T.Mikhailova, and A.Raksha. (2024). “War fatalities in Russia in 2022–2023 estimated via excess male mortality”. Demography. (Forthcoming.) [Open access]

3. Ethnic and regional inequalities in the Russian military fatalities in the war in Ukraine.

I used a crowdsourced data set on the Russian military fatalities in Ukraine to analyse how the fatality rates varied by ethnicity and region. To do this, I applied a machine learning classifier to infer perceived ethnicity from personal names.

A.Bessudnov. (2023). “Ethnic and regional inequalities in Russian military fatalities in Ukraine: Preliminary findings from crowdsourced data.” Demographic Research 48 (31): 883-898. [Open access]

Teaching

In Exeter, I teach social analysis, immigration and statistical data analysis. Please see details in Teaching.