Denis Shedov

Denis Shedov is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki, where his thesis focuses on civil society and human rights. As a human rights activist, Denis serves as a board member of the Human Rights Defence Centre Memorial and as an analyst at OVD-Info. His research primarily centers on the OSCE region, with a special emphasis on Russia.

Denis’s research interests include human rights and civil society within authoritarian regimes, with a particular focus on freedom of assembly, the role of lawyers in human rights advocacy, and their participation in the broader civil society context.

In his professional journey, Denis has contributed as a research assistant to the HuRiEE project at SSEES, UCL (2023-2024). Previously, he was a visiting research fellow at the Institute for East European Studies at the Free University of Berlin and at the Law and Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute in Halle (Saale), Germany. Denis is also actively involved in human rights policymaking. From 2023 to 2026, he holds an international mandate as a member of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) panel of experts on freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

In 2022, Denis co-authored the OSCE’s overview of the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Right to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly. Additionally, from 2022 to 2023, he participated in the drafting committee for the Sunflower Declaration (a call to action to protect human rights defenders at risk), presented at the 2023 Nobel Peace Conference.