About the Lecture: For more than twenty years, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) served as the most important international venue for Russian human rights lawyers. Through the Court, they challenged torture, political persecution, restrictions on free speech, and other human rights violations. However, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and its subsequent exclusion from the European human rights system, access to this legal avenue suddenly disappeared. What happens to lawyers whose professional lives were built around an institution that is no longer accessible to them? How do they continue (or discontinue) their professional work? How do they rethink their professional identities and their role in society amid growing authoritarian pressure and war? Drawing on interviews with Russian human rights lawyers conducted between 2023 and 2025, this lecture explores how legal professionals navigated the collapse of a long-standing transnational legal space. It presents unique empirical material and develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the transformation of professional identities among Russian cause lawyers after 2022. The analysis focuses on two key dimensions: the continuum between professional and activist orientations, and the continuum between domestic and international engagement. The lecture offers a unique perspective on the relationship between law, politics, and professional identity in times of authoritarian repression, institutional rupture, and ongoing war in Europe. Beyond the Russian case, it sheds light on the broader effects of international aggression and shrinking civic space on legal professions and civil society, while also highlighting the resilience, creativity, and adaptive capacity of rights advocates confronted with profound political change. This research is based on data collected within the framework of the Humans behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia (HuRiEE) project.
About the Speaker: Denis Shedov is a Research Collaborator in the HuRiEE project and a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the experiences of Russian human rights lawyers following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the intensification of domestic repression after 2022. Alongside his academic work, Denis has been involved with Russian civil society organizations, including OVD-Info and Human Rights Defence Centre Memorial. He also serves as a member of the OSCE ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association.