This workshop is funded by the UK-Ukraine R&I twinning grants scheme and brings together staff members from the twin institutions of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (BGKU) and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in order to consolidate collaboration between the two institutions.

It unpacks the connections between forced migration and the concept of loss in the displacement crisis in Ukraine and beyond, with the aim of offering policy-makers and organisations bottom-up understandings of how to better provide support to affected groups.

The war in Ukraine has had momentous political, social and economic impact at local, national and international levels and is popularly discussed through its connection to issues of loss -human, material, economic, cultural and social- both for the refugees and other affected communities. However, a systematic analysis of ‘loss’ in this particular context has yet to take place. In this workshop, we understand ‘loss’ both in its psychosocial readings as a form of mourning and trauma and within a social scientific frame as contested sets of relations and structures of feeling in historical, economic and socio-political processes. The focus on ‘loss’ engenders understandings of displacement and crisis in Ukrainian borderlands, urban spaces, and other European contexts. We will build on research synergies on the themes of conflict and displacement, European integration, and access to education in order to consolidate the twinning partnership.

For the full workshop programme, please see here.

For any queries, please contact the workshop convener at e.chatzipanagiotidou@qub.ac.uk