Abstracts
Paradigms in Times of War: Unpacking Research and Policy Challenges
16 & 17 November 2023
Day 1 (16 November)
Session 1: Youth and Generational Change (3.00 pm – 4.30 pm)
Across Europe and beyond, the war in Ukraine has had profound implications for generational belonging and political socialisation of children and young adults. Critical junctures are known to shift the political learning as well as political preferences within and across generations. In this panel we discuss models of political socialisation and the underlying explanations for how young learn to perceive of the political realm, apply these to the Polish case, where young people have been exposed to profound societal and political ruptures, and lastly look at the uprooted generational belonging and sense of history among older Ukrainians who were displaced as a result of the war.
Session 2: Simultaneity, Continuity or Disruption in Times of War? (3.00 pm – 4.30 pm)
In this panel, we want to discuss different political processes since February 2022. The presentations will address the changing perceptions of security and insecurity on a strategic and local level in Poland and Lithuania. With a focus on Bulgaria, it will map the political dynamics in the party system and re-emerging East-West divides in South eastern Europe. It will also investigate how climate change policies have developed in Russia prior to and since the start of war in Ukraine. A variety of processes show continuities, changes and discontinuities because or despite the disruptive war. With a focus on different times and temporal horizons, we want to discuss the challenges that arise from the war.
Day 2 (17 November)
Session 4: Displacement, Migration and Diaspora in Times of War (11.30 am - 1.00 pm)
Chair: Tsypylma Darieva (ZOiS Berlin)
Session 1: Opening the Black Box War (2.00 pm – 3.30 pm)
This session will focus on the challenges and possibilities of empirically documenting Russia’s war against Ukraine. Based on the inputs of the panelists on their respective experience with collecting quantitative data (esp. opinion polls and social media data) and qualitative data (esp. oral history data), the aim is to engage in an interactive discussion with all the participants many of whom will have their own experiences with collecting data amidst war. The representativeness, reliability, comparability, ethical standards and data archiving are among the issues to be discussed.
Location: Library
Chair: Gwendolyn Sasse (ZOiS Berlin)
Inputs by Tymofii Brik (Kyiv School of Economics; online), Natalia Otrishchenko (Center for Urban History, Lviv) and Olga Onuch (University of Manchester; online)
Session 2: Data Challenges in Russia: How Can We Deal with the Black Box? (2.00 pm – 3.30 pm)
Russia’s war against Ukraine put an end to the conventional ways of studying and understanding Russia. Fieldwork became almost impossible and access to previously accepted data sources got restricted or their credibility has to be called into question. This panel will discuss what data can help to get consistent view on the state of the Russian economy despite statistical censorship, what is still possible with regard to survey methodology (and what is not) and how to use digital footprints and Open Source Intelligence and Social Media Investigations (OSINT) techniques for understanding Russia's territorial strategies and dynamics.
Location: Conference Room 3
Chair: Julia Langbein (ZOiS)
Inputs by Alexandra Prokopenko (ZOiS Berlin), Michael Rochlitz (University of Oxford) and Kevin Limonier (Université Paris-8/Institute Française de Géopolitique)
Session 3: Research and Ethics in Conflict and War (2.00 pm – 3.30 pm)
This roundtable will focus on the ethical challenges of doing research in times and zones of conflict and war. Based on three short inputs from different professional perspectives we aim to discuss how we can do meaningful research without doing harm to respondents and researchers. We will discuss how to prepare for research in conflict and war, how to react to unforeseen events in the field and how to follow up this kind of research. We will talk about how to deal with formalist ethic requirements by institutions and how to improve them. We encourage all participants to actively take part in the discussion and share their own experience with us.
Location: Conference Room 4, EG+
Chair: Nina Frieß (ZOiS Berlin)
Inputs by Tetiana Skrypchenko (UNET Fellow), Tatjana Thelen (Universität Wien) and Marie-Céline Schulte (University of Chicago; Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Heidelberg Institute of Global Health)
Final Session: War and Post-War Cartography: How Do They Fuse (Spatial) Discourses on War, Peace and In-Between? (4.00 – 5.30 pm)
Visualisations are an important medium for shaping opinions and understandings of past or current developments while also creating specific understandings of space. This panel traces the roles and functions of visualisations in different peace and wartime settings. The contributors will look at how the media, scientists, politicians, artists and others create, use or interpret maps and visualisations to engage with different publics in peace and conflict contexts. We hope to examine not only strategies and decisions concerning the production and application of maps, but also the discourses which they fuse and the spaces they create.
Chair: Kerstin Bischl (ZOiS Berlin)
Inputs by Mela Žuljević (Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig), Flooded with Maps: Cartographic Legacies and Futures of Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina, Maksym Rokmaniko (Forensic Architecture, Berlin), Forensic Architecture, Timothy Barney (University of Richmond) and The Rhetorical Lives of War Maps