Kateryna Zarembo is an associate senior fellow at the New Europe Center (NEC), a Kyiv-based think tank dealing with foreign and security policy, where she participates in research and advocacy activities. Since October 2024, she has been a fellow the the Ukraine Research Network@ZOiS. Her project is titled The Short Path from the Desk to the Trenches: Whole-of-Society Defence in Ukraine from the Perspective of Academics-Turned-Military. While in Ukraine, both students and faculty members are exempt from obligatory mobilisation, many of them – both males and females – have joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine voluntarily and some have been killed in action. In her research, Kateryna focuses on how this voluntary conscription affects the human capital in academia. She is also interested in the volunteers’ motivation, the application (if any) of their academic skills in the army, their experience as military personnel, and their views of veteran reintegration into the civilian professional realm.