The Invasion of Ukraine: A Sociological Conversation about the Realities on the Ground, the Politics, and the Resistance
Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine has displaced countless Ukrainians, deprived millions of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and led to disastrous humanitarian crises.
To help sociologists in Canada and beyond understand the political and historical contexts of the war, the everyday suffering and resistance of Ukrainian people, and the implications of this war for the Ukrainian diaspora, the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) invites key experts in Ukraine and Canada to offer their views and insights on these issues.
Moderator: Dr. Qiang Fu, University of British Columbia, Canada
Qiang Fu is the Chair of the Canadian Sociological Association’s Policy, Ethics and Professional Concerns Subcommittee and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include computational social science, social capital, demography, health, urban studies, Chinese societies, machine learning, and statistics. He edits a forthcoming themed section on big data and computational sociology at the Canadian Review of Sociology.
CSA Host: Dr. Abdie Kazemipur, Unversity of Calgary, Canada
Abdie Kazemipur is the President of Canadian Sociological Association, as well as a professor of sociology, Chair of Ethnic Studies, and the Academic Director of the Research Data Centre at the University of Calgary. His most recent book, Sacred as Secular: Secularization under Theocracy in Iran (2022), has been published by MQUP.
Panelists:
Dr. Yuliya Bidenko
Yuliya Bidenko is MA in Sociology, Ph.D. in Political Science. She holds the position of Associate Professor and the Chair of the Master’s Program “Global Studies and the World Politics” at the Political Science Department, Karazin Kharkiv National University. Professor Bidenko participated in research and teaching excellence programs, was a panelist for more than 100 conferences and discussions in Ukraine, the USA, Canada, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Georgia, Belarus, and Moldova. She has published academic articles and papers devoted to the problems of civil society and democratization in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe. Dr. Bidenko is the expert for the “Team Europe” Initiative by the EU Delegation to Ukraine, she is regularly cooperating with the Ukrainian and international think tanks and civic education projects. In 2021 she was an author of the Ukrainian annual country report for the Nations in Transit by the Freedom House.
Dr. Tamara Martsenyuk
Tamara Martsenyuk holds a Ph.D. (Candidate of Sciences) in Sociology, she is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine), former Fulbright Scholar at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University (the USA, 2017-2018). Tamara shares the idea of public sociology – science and research for the sake of social change and is therefore constantly involved in various research or teaching projects. Her research interest is connected with gender and social structure, among them women’s access to the military. In 2015-2021 Tamara (with the research team) conducted sociological studies called “Invisible Batallion” that demonstrate successes and challenges of gender equality implementation in the Ukrainian armed forces, the status of female veterans, and the problem of sexual harassment in the military. Currently, Tamara is working on the research topic “Women’s involvement in the russia’s war against Ukraine”. After evacuation from Kyiv, Tamara is hosted by Free University Berlin as a temporary guest researcher.
Dr. Victor Satzewich
Victor Satzewich is a Professor of Sociology at McMaster University.
Dr. Jeffrey Stepnisky
Jeff Stepnisky is Associate Professor of Sociology and Kule Chair of Ukrainian Community and International Development at MacEwan University in Edmonton. At MacEwan he teaches classes in sociological theory and, recently, collective memory. He has published in academic journalson topics such selfhood, collective memory, social atmosphere, and the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. Also, with George Ritzer, he is co-author of several textbooks on sociological theory. Currently he is studying the Ukrainian collective memory of the Maidan revolution, the urban collective memory of Ukrainians in Edmonton, and the history of sociological theory in Ukraine.