Since his student years, he participated in grassroots activism and the trade union movement (among other things, he personally supported the strike of workers at a cement plant in the city of Mikhaylov, Ryazan Oblast).

A number of intra-university campaigns aimed at protecting the interests of students and teachers of Moscow State University are associated with his name.

[6] For his public activities, he was under pressure from the administration; in 2013 and 2018, they attempted to dismiss him from the university, but thanks to the solidarity campaign, he was reinstated as a teacher of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of MSU.

[7][8] Lobanov himself supported political prisoners, including fellow mathematicians Dmitry Bogatov[9] and Azat Miftakhov,[10] as well as members of the editorial board of the student magazine "DOXA".

[11] In the municipal elections in Moscow in 2022, he supported such candidates as Konstantin Konkov, Arseniy Lytar, Denis Zhilin, Vladlena Mokrousova, Nikita Kozlov.

[12] On 23 June 2023, the Russian government declared him a foreign agent, and the following July, he was fired from his post as docent of mechanics and mathematics at the Moscow State University.