“Resilience and Adaptation in Difficult Times”: Reflections on the 2025 Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies
By Olha Haidamachuk, Lidia Kuzemska, Taisiia Ratushna, and Yuliia Soroka
In June 2025, four Fellows of the Prisma Ukraїna: War, Migration, Memory research group at the Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin took part in the 9th annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies dedicated to “Resilience and Adaptation in Difficult Times”. The conference was organised by the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies and the Centre for East European and Eurasian Studies (CEURUS) of the University of Tartu in Estonia.

The choice of Tartu as a conference venue for an area studies conference – with a strong presence of international relations scholars – is understandable. The city has a tumultuous history with countless conquests and wars being waged for its control for centuries. Situated just dozens of kilometers from the Russian border, the city feels close enough to be potentially threatened – including from within. In January 2024, the Estonian Internal Security Service detained a prominent professor from Russia who worked at the University of Tartu (in fact was one of the key figures at the CEURUS) since 2010 for undermining the security of Estonia. He was later sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of spying for Moscow.
It is not surprising then that Estonia is actively engaging in learning from Ukraine about how to strengthen itself and its society faced with the Russian threat. In 2023, the largest and oldest university in the country – the University of Tartu – established the Ukraine Centre (UTUC) concentrating on developing Ukraine-focused teaching, policy analysis and raising awareness about Ukraine. Measured in percentage of the GDP (2.34%), Estonia is the top bilateral contributor to Ukraine since 2022. At the same time, Estonia is interested in learning about the Russian regime, Russian society, their strengths and weaknesses, so the support for the studies about Russia, including at the University of Tartu, is also significant.
The program of the three-day conference included thematic sessions, the plenary round table “Democracy and Resilience in Eastern Europe and Eurasia” at the opening of the conference in the beautiful White Hall of the University museum (Tartu Ülikooli muuseum), a keynote lecture “Tiny Gardens Everywhere: a Kaleidoscopic History of the Food Sovereignty Frontier” by Prof. Kate Brown and informal communication throughout coffee breaks, a drinks reception and a conference dinner.
On the second day, the Prisma Ukraїna Fellows organised a very well-attended panel entitled “Memories of War: Barriers and Bridges between Past, Present, and Future in the Ukrainian Experience”. Sociologist Yuliia Soroka – a discussant during the panel – reflects:
Our panel discussed memory as a tool to support or deny the connection between people, their identification, and feelings of belonging to social groups and communities. Presentations during the panel raised questions about the barriers and bridges that arise between people experiencing war, how modern technological tools, conceptual tools and research methodologies are involved in this process, and whether it is possible to see the future from a current perspective.
Olha Haidamachuk focused on the transformations in the memory of Ukrainian forced migrants during the war. The applied methodology of tonalities enabled her to broaden the field of research attention, allowing us to observe not only the rational and verbalised reactions of informants, but also to be sensitive to their emotional states. Taisiia Ratushna analyzed the role of social media as a tool of communication and connection for Ukrainian forced migrants with the home country, the centrality of family ties in migrants’ everyday lives, the ritualised nature of communication with relatives in Ukraine, the growing emotional distance from them, and the symbolic nature of digital care. Lidia Kuzemska looked at the public attitudes towards war-caused social groups: IDPs, refugees, people in the temporarily occupied territories, with comparison not only of conflict potentials in attitudes towards different groups, but also compared different sociological methods of measuring attitudes and potential divisions within society.
Together, these presentations illustrate that memory ensures the prolongation of society in the past. According to Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology[1], the social world encompasses not only contemporaries but also predecessors. Memory helps to reproduce social values and cultural meanings, and, in general, it reproduces society. Modern informational technologies support memories as instruments for relationships and connections, creating a symbolic space for the objectification of memories, thereby opening them up for political use, discursive construction, and manipulation. War prioritises hostile relationships (we and them, friends and enemies) among people, influencing the spread of these relations from the societal (national) level to the inter-group and inter-individual levels. Memories influence the relationships, create solidarities in some cases, and destroy people’s connections in others. This also applies to connections with the past, saved in our memories, as well as destroyed or rebuilt families, friend circles, teams, and communities.
In conclusion, I would like to remind us of the idea from Berger and Luckmann’s book, “The Social Construction of Reality.”[2] The third level of legitimation of social reality includes professionally produced theories. It means that scholars not only represent reality, but also produce it, which raises numerous questions about positionality, scholars’ values and identities, and how the results of our research influence us to reproduce them. This idea is crucial to me not only in wartime.
We asked other Fellows who went to Tartu what their highlights were during the conference. Sociologist Taisiia Ratushna noted:
Attending the Tartu conference was a truly enriching academic experience. It brought together a diverse community of scholars and practitioners, offering a broad and interdisciplinary programme centred on the theme of resilience and adaptation in the face of adversity.
The thematic breadth of the conference was genuinely impressive, and I was particularly interested in several panels that closely aligned with my research interests. The opening plenary roundtable on “Democracy and Resilience in Eastern Europe and Eurasia” was an intellectually stimulating discussion that laid a solid foundation for the days that followed. The speakers reflected on the varied manifestations of resilience across the region, and the discussion brought forth important questions concerning the durability of democratic institutions and civil society under strain.
Among the panels I attended, the roundtable “Metropolitan and Imperialist Frameworks of Knowledge Production in East European Studies” with Darius Staliūnas (Lithuanian Institute of History), Botakoz Kassymbekova (University of Zürich) and Anton Saifullayeu (University of Warsaw) was particularly thought-provoking, as it critically interrogated the epistemological hierarchies that continue to shape academic knowledge production in and about the region.
Another highlight was the panel on “Grassroots Activism and Mobilisation in Eurasia”, which offered valuable insights into civic mobilisation and digital strategies in response to political and environmental crises. This theme was continued and deepened in the session “Investigative Media and Digital Practices in the Baltic States”, a panel closely aligned with my research interests.
Particularly noteworthy were the presentations by Miglė Bareikytė and Johanna Hiebl (European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)) on the practices of investigative journalism in Europe. Their work illuminated the unique operational challenges facing investigative media today. Equally compelling was the presentation by Yaroslava Bukhta (University of Oxford), titled “Adapting to the conditions of war: how the Russian full-scale war against Ukraine changes journalism in Ukraine and beyond”. Her paper initiated a lively and important discussion about the tension between ethical standards, safety concerns, and the imperatives of war reporting.
From a methodological standpoint, I was interested in the presentation by Alexander Hardy (University of Liverpool), “Digital Diplomacy or Disinformation? Russia, The Baltic States, & Contested Memory”. His analysis of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs rhetoric on X (formerly Twitter) concerning the Baltic States resonated with my use of social media analysis as a research method.
The panel “Rethinking Democracy in Times of War: Insights from Ukraine” was particularly significant. The contributions by Anatoliy Kruglashov, Olena Ovcharenko, Olha Ivasiuk, and Olga Matveieva provided an empirically rich and nuanced view of how democratic institutions and civil society in Ukraine are demonstrating resilience under wartime conditions. Overall, the conference provided an excellent opportunity not only to engage with current debates in East European and Eurasian studies but also to connect with scholars working on intersecting themes.
Prisma Ukraїna Fellow Lidia Kuzemska recalled:
For me, the most interesting panels were those where participants reflected on the changes and challenges of knowledge production in and about the region: what kind of and whose knowledge is centre-staged? Left on the margins? Ignored? Who studies whom and why? How can old, often gate-kept venues, such as Eastern Europe/Russia-focused departments, journals and funding schemes or prizes, be less centred on Russia and Russian studies and more on other countries in the region or on cross-regional topics? What is the impact of a researcher’s positionality on the research questions asked or on the research vocabulary used? Can “Western” (liberal democratic) concepts and theories be applied to the study of illiberal authoritarian regimes? In that respect, I agree with Taisiia Ratushna that the roundtable “Metropolitan and Imperialist Frameworks of Knowledge Production in East European Studies” was thought-provoking.
As I research Ukrainians in Russia, I was also interested in “Studying Russia and Its War” panel (with Andrey Makarychev, Yulia Kurnyshova, Vanessa Ruget – all from the University of Tartu, and Dinissa Duvanova from the Lehigh University) to understand what the views of researchers of Russia and from Russia are on the future of Russian studies and their strategies to overcome the impossibility to do fieldwork in Russia, how they reflect on the dilemmas of Russian academia and deglobalisation of Russian science? There were expectedly more questions than answers, yet still the most puzzling for me, if not telling, were the remarks from the panellists that, in general, Eastern European experts were surprised by the Russian invasion in February 2022, its resilience to Western sanctions and the creative use of “informality” to sustain the war (shadow fleet, Wagner group, de-facto allowed, if not encouraged, smuggling of sanctioned goods). Such acknowledgements warn us yet again about the limits of academic expertise and remind us to be more down-to-earth with our claims to understand the Russian ‘black box’.
Reflecting on her impressions from the conference, cultural studies expert Olha Haidamachuk said:
I liked that the program of the conference was rich in Ukrainian voices. In addition to the fact that individual discussion panels or round tables were dedicated to Ukrainian culture, sociology or history, several thematically international panels also included speeches by Ukrainian scholars. For example, at one of the first round tables “Decolonising Museums: Insights from Ukraine’s New Museum Guide”, Tetyana Filevska moderated a discussion with Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts and Tallinn University), Olena Chervonik (University of Oxford), Kristine Milere (Latvian National Museum of Art) and Lucy Zoria (British Council of Ukraine) as some of the co-authors of the book “Decolonising Art: Beyond the Obvious”. Intended for an academic audience, this book is designed to provide interested scholars with a toolkit for cooperation with domestic and foreign museums to avoid misrepresentations of artefacts both in expositions and catalogues etc. Attention was paid to the terminological discussion regarding the word “decolonsation” itself, as it often causes misunderstandings, in particular, between the Ukrainian and European academic communities, and therefore actualises the request for a thoughtful and comprehensive revision of the terminological vocabulary. The problem of epistemic injustice, safety-colonisation/self-colonisation, cooperation with colonisers, restitution, repatriation of heritage and inter-imperiality were discussed in the context of the theme. It was particularly emphasised that the rethinking, reassessment, revisions, etc. that have been initiated are long-term and cannot be completed for the sake of efficiency, so the acute issues are fundamentally open-ended.
Interdisciplinary discussions on culture, sociology or history of the Baltic States were also very interesting, especially when it came to security reforms under threat, digital diplomacy, “controversial” memories, iterative coding strategy or affective epistemology. In this context, for example, it was interesting to see a modern map of the 10th-11th centuries in the university museum: Tartu is in the centre of the map, while Kyiv and Chernihiv are somewhere on the southern periphery.
The discussion “Politics of Memory: Meanings, Myths, Monuments”, chaired by Juhan Saharov (University of Tartu), Shan Huang (Tsinghua University), Igor Zavorotchenko (Charles University in Prague), Marco Simonetti (Independent researcher) and Roberto Belleri (University of Macerata) also raised some thought-provoking questions like for whom we memorise, what determined epistemic blindness, why monument removal is a battlefield for competing narratives, what are the achievements and challenges of the globalisation of memory and how ‘apocalyptic’ fears influence memory.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to participate in the vast majority of discussions, since each time out of five parallel sessions it was possible to choose only one. However, organised informal communication allowed to slightly expand the possibilities of scientific networking. Overall, the conference left a pleasant impression, providing not only feedback on my research, but also adding a lot of new thoughts, ideas, reservations, etc. to think about.
Notes
[1] Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World. Northwestern University Press, 1967.
[2] Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Penguin Books Ltd, 1991.
About the Authors
Olha Haidamachuk is an associate professor at the Department of Ukrainian Studies, Cultural Studies and History of Science at the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine. She has been a member of the Kharkiv Historical and Philological Society since 2019. Since 2022, Olha Haidamachuk has been a member of the Prisma Ukraïna War, Migration, Memory research group. She is a 2024/25 fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin.
Lidia Kuzemska is a sociologist with an interdisciplinary interest in forced migration, internal displacement, borders, and citizenship. She is a 2024/25 Prisma Ukraïna fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation at the Forum Transregionale Studien and academic coordinator of the research group War, Migration, Memory. In 2022, she received her Ph.D. from Lancaster University (UK). She is also a research affiliate at the Internal Displacement Research Programme (SOAS University of London) and a peer-reviewer for the Knowledge Platform and Connection Hub (UN Network on Migration).
Taisiia Ratushna is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology at Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine. In 2010, she received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the Classical Private University (Zaporizhzhia). Since then, she has been working at the Department of Sociology at Zaporizhzhia National University and has been researching communication processes in urban space and virtual environments. In 2020, she obtained an MA in psychology. In the academic year 2022/23, she was a scholarship holder at the University of Tübingen (Germany). Taisiia Ratushna has been a member of the War, Migration, Memory research group at the Forum Transregionale Studien since 2022. In 2024/25, she is a Prisma Ukraïna fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Yuliia Soroka is a sociologist of culture. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology, and is Professor of Sociology at the N.V. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine) and a senior researcher in the Human Geography Unit of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Yuliia Soroka has been a member of the War, Migration, Memory research group since 2022. In 2024/25, she is a Prisma Ukraïna fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Citation: Olha Haidamachuk, Lidia Kuzemska, Taisiia Ratushna, and Yuliia Soroka, “Resilience and Adaptation in Difficult Times”: Reflections on the 2025 Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 28.10.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/62113
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (October 28, 2025). “Resilience and Adaptation in Difficult Times”: Reflections on the 2025 Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved November 11, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/151yb


