Alexandra Prokopenko was a research associate at ZOiS from May 2023 until March 2024 and is still an affiliated researcher. She has been a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center since April 2024. Prokopenko is an expert on Russian economic and monetary policy and the Kremlin's decision-making processes. Her economic analyses focus in particular on Russian monetary and fiscal policy and the situation of the Russian elite (both top bureaucrats and companies). She publishes a weekly newsletter on Russia’s economy for The Bell, one of Russia's leading independent online media. She is also a Visiting Fellow at DGAP’s Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.

From 2017 to 2022, Prokopenko worked as an adviser at the Central Bank of Russia and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. From 2008 to 2017, she worked as a reporter, first at the TASS news agency and then at Vedomosti, Russia’s then leading business newspaper. In 2018, Prokopenko completed a Master’s in Sociology at the University of Manchester and the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka). Her thesis focused on narrative types in the field of bureaucracy. In 2009, Prokopenko was a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. She also earned a degree from Moscow State University in 2006.

• Crisis Habit: Why Russia’s Economy has been So Resilient to Sanctions