Notes from the field: Amelie Tolvin, CERES MA student, at the Aleksanteri Instiute, University of Helsinki

After spending two years cooped up in Toronto, spending the summer in Finland for the field component of my MA gave me a very welcome change in scenery. While at CERES, my focus has been on protest movements and contentious politics in Belarus, which informed my decision to begin a research internship with the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki. As part of my internship, I have been working as a research assistant on two projects – one of which is Electoral Malpratice, Cyber-Security and Political Consequences in Russia and Beyond (ElMaRB). The ElMaRB project team has given me such a wide range of tasks– I’ve been doing research and data collection, helping out with their in-house seminars, and even contributing to their blog, where I was given free rein within the context of the project to focus on my interests —  thus, I was able to write about Belarus’ recent constitutional referendum, and am working on another piece about the future of elections in Ukraine.