Oshank Hashemi is affiliated to research group GCSEES. He holds a master's degree in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Leiden University (The Netherlands). In 2016 he graduated with a master’s thesis on Russian Symbolists and their reception of the work of Nikolay Gogol. He is also the winner of Peter Baehr Award 2016 for the best Ph.D. research proposal by a former political refugee. His research article on “The Voices of the Other: the Representation of Central Asian Gastarbeiter in Putin’s Russia” (as portrayed in independent cinema) is forthcoming.
Since January 2018, he has been working on his Ph.D. project Reading Pushkin, Supporting Putin: Russian Literature and the Kremlin’s Nation-Building Agenda.