Congratulations to doctoral researcher Ruta Skriptaite on being awarded her PhD.
Her thesis titled 'Political Image-making and Hegemonic Masculinity in the post-Soviet Space: A Case Study Analysis of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Saparmurat Niyazov-Turkmenbashi' explores the question of the affinity between hegemony masculinity and political image-making in the post-Soviet space, particularly juxtaposing the cases of the current Belarusian president [of questionable legitimacy] Aliaksandr Lukashenka -‘Batka’, the first and now former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev - ‘Papa’, and the now deceased first president of the independent Turkmenistan president Saparmurat Niyazov -‘Turkmenbashi’.
The question of the presence of the said affinity is assessed by employing four lenses: malleability, signalling of heterosexuality and virility (including the subordination of ‘non-hegemonic’ masculinities), subordination of women and legitimation. These four phenomena comprise the corner stones of the phenomenon of hegemonic masculinity. The study finds that, to a different degree, all three cases possess the aforementioned four ‘corner stones’. The juxtaposition of the case studies shows that even the ‘Father of the Nation’ trope, generally perceived as hegemonic as well as highly traditionalist, does allow some flexibility when it comes to channelling it as well as how it relates to the pairing with other tropes, which are all perceived as hegemonic. The findings serve as a great testament to the malleable, context-dependent and everchanging nature of the hegemonic masculinity phenomenon.
Ruta's PhD was examined by Dr Carl Gibson (University of Nottingham) and Dr Anaïs Marin (United Nations). Her PhD was supervised by Dr Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham) and Professor Bettina Renz (University of Nottingham)
Posted on Tuesday 10th February 2026