Tina Burrett

Professor, Ph.D. in Social and Political Science

I am a political scientist specializing in political leadership and the media, especially in Russia, the UK and Myanmar. I became interested in Russia as a child when I visited the Soviet Union. While other families went to Disneyland in Florida, mine went to Moscow to visit Lenin's tomb. My love of British politics started when I played Margaret Thatcher in a school play. My route into politics has been unconventional! But after all these years, politics is still my passion. I look forward to getting to know you and hearing about your passions over the coming semesters at KUAS.

E-Mail: tina.burrett
Website: https://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/faculty-of-liberal-arts/burrett_tina/
Areas of Research: Media and Politics, Political Leadership, Propaganda

Profile

Tina Burrett is a Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Japan where she is also Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture. She earned her BA in Politics and Parliamentary Studies at Leeds University and then continued her education at Cambridge University, where she obtained her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Social and Political Science. She originally moved to Japan from the UK as a Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation scholar in 2006.

Her research focuses on political leadership and media freedom, especially in Asia, Russia and the UK. She is the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Trauma in East Asia (2023), Japan in the Heisei Era 1989-2019 (Routledge, 2021), Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia (Routledge, 2020) and the author of  Television and Presidential Power in Putin’s Russia (Routledge, 2011) and Contemporary Prime Ministerial Leadership in Britain and Japan (Routledge, 2023). Her recent scholarship also includes ‘Litvinenko and Skripal Compared: Hyper-Partisanship and the Russian Media’ The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism (Editors J. Morrison, J. Birks and M. Berry, Routledge, 2021); ‘Charting Putin’s Shifting Populism in the Russian Media 2000-2020’ Politics and Governance 8(2) 2020; ‘Russian Television Coverage of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election’, Demokratizatsiya 26(3) 2018; and ‘Mixed Signals: Democratization and the Myanmar Media’ Politics and Governance 5(3) 2017.

She is currently pursuing a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) project investigating the changing representations of Russia’s international allies and adversaries on Russian state television during Vladimir Putin’s 23-year presidency. The project analyses changes in how China, Japan, Britain, Ukraine, the EU and the United States are presented by Russia’s media as a window into the shifting values and perceptions held by Russian state leaders that underpin their foreign policy. The project will be published as a book by Routledge in 2025 (under contract).

She began visiting Moscow as a researcher over 20 years ago. Her work in the Russian media sector involves interviews with Russian journalists, many of whom are currently in jail for their reporting on the war in Ukraine.

Alongside her academic work, she frequently writes for the media on Russia and other topics. Here is an article she published on opposition to the Ukraine War in Russia:

https://newint.org/features/2022/03/04/russia-ukraine-war-peace-protest

And on the brave work being conducted by ordinary Ukrainians to support their country and communities at this horrendous time in their national story:

https://newint.org/features/2022/04/08/volunteers-shouldering-ukraine-humanitarian-response

Professor Burrett has worked in the British, Canadian, European and Japanese parliaments (where she was a research assistant to Kono Taro). In 2021-2022, she was a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where she also completed her Ph.D.