Dr Khmelnitskaya joined the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki as a post-doctoral researcher at the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies “Choices of Russian Modernisation” in September 2015. She holds doctorate from the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Her research interests are Russian and comparative politics, public policy-making and governance, policy experts, ideas and discourses, historical institutionalism and the processes of institutional change. Marina's research is based on a qualitative methodology, comparative case study analysis and historical process tracing. Her empirical expertise includes the areas of social, housing and urban planning policies. Marina is the author of The Policy-Making Process and Social Learning in Russia: the Case of Housing Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Her articles appeared in Post-Communist Economies, Russian Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, Russian Analytical Digest and Housing Finance International among other journals.