PERSONAL BRANDING FOR ACADEMIC FACULTY: A NEW SOCIAL PHENOMENON FOR RUSSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION?

The paper reports the results of a pilot study on the extent to which academic faculty at Russian higher education institutions engage in personal branding. The paper places personal branding in the context of an increased reliance on social media by Russian higher education institutions and examines the question of whether personal branding might be conducive to academic faculty's career advancement. Employing analysis of publicly available data, the authors demonstrate that leading Russian universities use social media to raise their profile. Analysis of the Facebook, Instagram and vk social media accounts of academic faculty at a prominent Russian university demonstrated that almost a third of academic faculty engaged in personal branding to some extent, and almost 7% engaged in strategic personal branding. This was limited, however, to senior faculty members and it is unclear whether their strategic personal branding impacts on their career advancement or is merely reflective of it. It remains to be seen whether this trend will 'trickle down' and become more prevalent among Russian academic faculty.