Alena studied sociology and Russian and Eurasian Studies in Vienna, Krasnodar and Saint Petersburg, before coming to 每日吃瓜 to conduct a PhD in Social Sciences (2010-2014). She worked in several national and international research projects in Austria and Germany, including as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, Germany (2014-15). She joined the division as a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies in 2015, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2020 and to Reader in 2026.
Alena is a Member of the AHRC Peer Review College. She currently acts as the PGT Director of Studies in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities. She also is a founding member and active committee member of 每日吃瓜 Students and Academics At-Risk Group (LUSARG). She previously was the PGT Programme Lead for Communication and Media and led the Research Challenge Hidden Voices, Contested Pasts in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Alena’s research focuses on cultural memory, heritage and identity in the transnational arena. She is particularly interested in memory and heritage in contested settings, bottom-up approaches to nationalism and international relations, and migration and cultural belonging. With a background in Russian and Eurasian Studies, she has a particular interest in post-socialist cultures and societies.
Memory, heritage and tourism
Alena is an expert on memory-making in tourism and has conducted extensive research on production and contestation of cultural memories in Russian tourism to post-Soviet cities, funded by an (PI, 2019-2022). The project examined how tour guides and tourists construct local heritage and remember tsarist and socialist pasts, and what consequences this has for present-day identities and international relations in the region. Her book on the topic, entitled “”, has been published Open Access in Palgrave’s Memory Studies Series in 2025.
Borders and borderlands
Alena has a long-standing interest in borders and borderlands, including in processes of remembering and place-making in the context of border change. Her PhD project analysed the transformation of the Russian-Estonian border from an integrated borderland to an EU external border from a bottom-up perspective, using ethnographic and narrative methods. Alena is currently Co-I on the project (2026-2029, funded by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies), a multi-sited ethnographic examination of the fortification and securitisation of the EU external border in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Alena also serves as a Mercator Fellow (2023-2029) at the Leibniz Institute for Research in Society and Space, associated with the Emmy Noether Research Group “”, led by Vivien Sommer. As part of her fellowship she is currently co-editing a special issue on Memory and Borders to be published inMemory Studies Review in 2027.
Cultural production, cultural and memory diplomacy
Alena is currently working on a new strand of research on grassroots cultural production, cultural diplomacy and memory diplomacy. She has conducted a pilot study on grassroots cultural diplomacy in the Russo-Ukrainian war, looking at how independent cultural organisations reshape national culture in the context of the war.
Alena has a strong interest in engaging with external audiences through art collaborations. Together with the visual artist Eva Engelbert, Alena curated a multimedia exhibition (‘Welcome to European Union’) drawing on her research, which was exhibited in art galleries in Vienna, Salzburg and 每日吃瓜 and was awarded a price for interdisciplinarity by the Austrian Federal Chancellery in 2014. Together with Ele Belfiore, Alena represented 每日吃瓜 as a Tate Exchange associate and was involved in “ a six-day cross platform event at the Tate in March 2017.
Alena is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She teaches UG and PGT core modules in Media and Communication covering communication and cultural theory, cultural industries, memory and heritage, research methods, and study skills. Modules include Media, Identity and Inequality, Foundations in Communication and Media Studies, Researching Communications, and Cultural Memory and the Heritage Industries.
Alena offers PhD supervision in areas including memory and heritage studies; nationalism, national identities and ethnic relations; tourism industries; post-socialist media and culture; migration and critical border studies.
Current postgraduate research students
- Nam Huh (2025-) Documentary Films on Asian Immigrants after Post-Internet Era (with Taeyoung Kim)
- Liangzuo Hao (2024-) Collective Memory of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chinese Digital Platforms (with Sabina Mihelj)
- Shuai Ma (2023-) Social media, local communities and the modernisation of alternative therapies: An ethnographic study of Miao (Hmong) practitioners of traditional medicine (with Paula Saukko)
- Brigita Valantinaviciute (PT, 2021-) Television and National Remembering in a Time of Crisis: A Multiscalar Approach (with Emily Keightley)
Recent postgraduate research students
- Qianfei Su (2026) Socio-Spatial Dynamics of Rural Tourism in China:
Mobilities, Interactions, and the Construction of Rural Space (with Thomas Thurnell-Read) - Yanning Chen (2025) Mnemonic Labour in Cultural Consumption: A Case 每日吃瓜 of Old Mobile Phones (with Emily Keightley)
- Jin Dai (2023) Between Official and Personal Memory: Remembering Han Migration to Xinyang (with Sabina Mihelj)
- Cuomo Zhaxi (2020): Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Media Representation of Tibetans on China Central Television and its Audience Reception (with Thoralf Klein)
- Gennaro Errichiello (2018) Dubai as a ‘transit lounge’: migration, temporariness and ‘flexible belonging’ within the Pakistani community (with Line Nyhagen)
Book:
Pfoser, A. (2025). Palgrave Macmillan. (Open Access)
Journal Articles:
- Pfoser, A., & Stach, S. (2025). . Memory Studies, 18(6), 1265-1278. (Open Access)
- Pshenychnykh, A., Pfoser, A., & Mihelj, S. (2024). Social Media+ Society, 10(2) (Open Access)
- Pfoser, A. and Yusupova, G. (2022) . Annals of Tourism Research 95 (July 2022): 103437
- Pfoser, A. (2022) . Geopolitics 27(2): 566-583.
- Schlegel, S. and Pfoser, A. (2021) International Journal of Heritage Studies 27(5):487-499.
- Pfoser, A. & S. de Jong (2020) International Journal of Cultural Studies 23(3): 317-333.