The Impact of Covid-19 on ZOiS research

From 9 to 11 September 2020, the first fully virtual academic workshop took place at ZOiS. One week later, we sat down with organisers Nina Frieß and Félix Krawatzek to discuss the pros and cons of going virtual for an academic event.

Tsypylma Darieva studies religious diversity in Azerbaijan and Georgia. She tells us how religious communities attempt to maintain their activities and a sense of togetherness during the pandemic. As an anthropologist, Darieva considers the future of standard ethnographic fieldwork a major challenge.

Beate Eschment’s focus of interest is Central Asia, currently especially Kazakhstan. Direct personal contacts and observations on site are very important for her research. Since it is currently impossible to predict when a stay in Kazakhstan will be possible again, she had to postpone a planned publication project.

Sabine von Löwis researches how conflict restricts and influences everyday life in Transnistria. She also studies changes in everyday life in the border regions of Ukraine. Some border regions are already tense places to research, and Covid-19 does not make access easier.

Taking Georgian migrants as an example, Diana Bogishvili studies how cross-border relations might affect social inequality in Georgia. Covid-19 has changed their lives and their views. For example, by limiting mobility the pandemic has also confined “the search for the new” that defines freedom for many of them.

Julia Langbein studies how the EU shapes room for development in its three peripheries. In times of crisis, such as Covid-19, there are growing calls for a stronger, more active role for both the European Union and domestic states in promoting economic development.

In our interview, Gwendolyn Sasse explains why the socioeconomic impact of Covid-19 in Eastern Europe will be acute and tells us about the challenge to incorporate the effects of the pandemic into ongoing projects without seeing every aspect of them through the Covid19-lens.

Félix Krawatzek studies political involvement and views of young people across Eastern Europe. To him it is particularly interesting, how the implications of Covid-19 differ along generational lines. At the same time, the pandemic severely limits data-collection through face-to-face interviews.

Nadja Douglas observes that the pandemic has revealed severe criticism towards the authorities in Belarus. In Armenia, civic activists have been extraordinarily creative in fighting the disease and related consequences of the crisis. Unlike Belarus, they are doing this jointly with the government.

Regina Elsner’s research focuses on the way the Orthodox churches in Russia and Ukraine react to the social challenges and developments in their countries. For her, the pandemic highlights a main hypothesis: In times of crisis, the churches lack concepts and language to embrace the situation of society.