Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Global Dialogues During the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

2023, Journal of International Relations and Development

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00315-0

Commendable efforts to include Ukrainian researchers in academic debates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine nevertheless reflect knowledge hierarchies that characterise contemporary academia, which is compounded by the difficulties that scholars face when they study violence in their own communities. On a practical level, Ukrainian researchers were busy performing the physical work of surviving or, if based abroad, the emotional work of worrying about the safety of friends and family. Many volunteered their time and resources for Ukrainian causes. The pastoral care and public engagement elements of their job expanded. Some Ukrainian scholars also engaged in tone (self)policing in order to prevent their arguments from alienating key audiences or being dismissed as too partisan or naive. The peculiarities of Ukrainian contemporary history and politics-(for instance, its self-perceived belonging to 'the West' and the fact that 'Western' countries have contributed the most to Ukraine's self-defence) at times resulted in a lack of common vocabulary with postcolonial and critical scholarship. This article calls for deeper understanding and closer engagement between academics and activists working in and on the 'Global East' and the 'Global South', as well as for more self-aware and caring ways of researching war.

Journal of International Relations and Development https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00315-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine Kseniya Oksamytna1 © Springer Nature Limited 2023 Abstract Commendable efforts to include Ukrainian researchers in academic debates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine nevertheless reflect knowledge hierarchies that characterise contemporary academia, which is compounded by the difficulties that scholars face when they study violence in their own communities. On a practical level, Ukrainian researchers were busy performing the physical work of surviving or, if based abroad, the emotional work of worrying about the safety of friends and family. Many volunteered their time and resources for Ukrainian causes. The pastoral care and public engagement elements of their job expanded. Some Ukrainian scholars also engaged in tone (self)policing in order to prevent their arguments from alienating key audiences or being dismissed as too partisan or naive. The peculiarities of Ukrainian contemporary history and politics – (for instance, its self-perceived belonging to ‘the West’ and the fact that ‘Western’ countries have contributed the most to Ukraine’s self-defence) at times resulted in a lack of common vocabulary with postcolonial and critical scholarship. This article calls for deeper understanding and closer engagement between academics and activists working in and on the ‘Global East’ and the ‘Global South’, as well as for more self-aware and caring ways of researching war. Keywords Knowledge production · Ukraine · Global South · Global East · Russian invasion Introduction Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were calls for greater inclusion of Ukrainian researchers in the debates about the war (Khromeychuk 2022). Yet Ukrainian researchers inside and outside Ukraine encountered barriers in engaging in such debates. Some of these challenges were linked to increased demands on Ukrainian researchers’ time. Others arose from the expectations in * Kseniya Oksamytna [email protected] 1 City University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK Vol.:(0123456789) K. Oksamytna international academia about what knowledge is valuable and how it should be produced, presented, and disseminated. Finally, some challenges also related to the difficulties in building global dialogues with other researchers (and survivors) of war, imperialism, and mass atrocities due to disciplinary, ideological, and geopolitical divides into which Ukraine does not neatly fit (Labuda 2023). As a scholar of peacekeeping and international organizations who researches conflicts in Africa, Southeastern Asia, and the Caribbean, I have followed the debates on the difference in the status of ‘global’ and ‘local’ expertise (e.g. Marchais, Bazuzi, and Amani Lameke 2020; Kessi et al. 2020). Ukrainian researchers, especially those based in Ukraine, are also sometimes seen as a source of ‘local’ perspectives on the Russian invasion rather than a ‘global’ or comparative understanding of war. Even though the full-scale invasion created a demand for their input, it still had to be delivered in accordance with disciplinary conventions, media cycles, and political sensibilities in countries of the ‘core West’(Chaban and Headley 2023; Hendl 2022; Kurylo 2023). In this article, I discuss three types of challenges that Ukrainian researchers faced when producing knowledge on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: care, service, and emotional labour; tone (self)policing; and variable levels of sympathy and solidarity from colleagues in postcolonial, critical, and at times feminist quarters. In the concluding section, I offer preliminary reflections on how dialogues across disciplinary, ideological, and geopolitical divides could be fostered. These personal observations are necessarily tentative, subjective, and incomplete, and I certainly cannot speak about the experiences of the entire Ukrainian research community. More systematic studies in the future would be a valuable contribution to the growing literature on hierarchies and inequalities in academic knowledge production (e.g. Stavrevska et al 2023; Mälksoo 2021a; Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021; Zvobgo et al 2023). Care, service, and emotional labour Contemporary academia is characterised by intense competition and ‘individual hyperproduction’ (Stavrevska et al 2023: 17). After the full-scale Russian invasion, researchers based in Ukraine struggled to maintain their pre-2022 productivity levels.1 Many researchers joined the defence forces, engaged in volunteering, or became displaced within or beyond Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian researchers based at institutions outside Ukraine had the enormous privilege of not experiencing the violence first-hand and ‘only’ worrying about the safety of friends and families. Many helped Ukrainian relatives and acquaintances flee and adapt to lives in new locations. Many took part in protests and donation drives. Many provided pastoral care to Ukrainian students and participated in initiatives by their institutions to assist 1 It is important to remember that even before the 2022 escalation, many researchers based in Ukraine were affected by the Russian invasion that began in 2014 if they lived on, or fled from, temporarily occupied territories. Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine universities in Ukraine. All this came on top of regular responsibilities in terms of teaching, research, administration, and applying for funding. Ukrainians academics based abroad also witnessed the expansion of the academic service and public engagement component of their job. Many volunteered to speak to the media and participate in academic or policy discussions on the implications of the full-scale invasion as universities competed to provide analysis of the unfolding events. Ukrainian academics’ participation in these discussions was driven in part by a sense of duty to correct the prevailing misconceptions (e.g. Sonevytsky 2022) and in part by an awareness that their employers needed to showcase expertise on this key matter, scarce as it might have been due to the underfunding of research on the ‘Global East’ (e.g. Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021). At the same time, media directed their requests to Ukrainian scholars based at universities outside Ukraine rather than in the country. Ukrainian scholars based abroad were at times asked to comment on the war regardless of the primary focus on their research and, as Chaban and Headley (2023, 12) note, ‘[m]ost felt it strange to be asked to speak on areas outside their direct expertise and refused to do so.’ As for myself, after one short piece in The Conversation on how international hierarchies explained the relations between Ukraine and Russia, I suddenly received multiple media invitations to comment on the military-strategic aspects of the Russian invasion. I had to turn many of them down, particularly when they were anchored by the question of ‘when Ukraine would (finally) make peace with Russia’. Questions like this not only insinuated that Ukraine was somehow at fault for the start and continuation of the Russian aggression but also implied that Ukraine should accept the continued occupation of its territories. Since there seemed to be more Ukrainian researchers working in the humanities, area studies, and comparative politics than International Relations or strategic studies, and since war is usually narrowly seen as ‘an IR issue’, foreign experts quickly filled the niche. My decision at the start of my career to pursue IR had been shaped both by my interests and the career incentives of contemporary academia that ‘privileges IR theorising over empirical research on and from places outside of the Western core’ (Kaczmarska and Ortmann 2021: 821). Since my surname is not obviously Ukrainian to people from outside the region, I embraced the ambiguity (a colleague who saw it on a university website confessed that they assumed I was either from Japan or Nigeria). It might have helped me avoid being pigeonholed as an expert on ‘my’ region, which is a typical experience for scholars from Eastern Europe (Burlyuk 2019). It came as a surprise to some colleagues that I was from Ukraine when the full-scaled Russian invasion began. Upon discovering it, they (in a well-meaning way) invited me to panels and events to discuss the invasion. I sometimes had to decline for reasons outlined in this section, as well as due the occasional lack of energy to brace myself for hearing Russian propaganda repeated at me by seemingly well-informed audiences of colleagues and students (see also Sonevytsky 2022). When declining those invitations, I worried that I came across as insufficiently dedicated to the Ukrainian cause or to the IR discipline that tried to understand this ‘new’ major ‘crisis’. Of course, issues faced by Ukrainian researchers outside Ukraine paled in comparison with those faced by academics in Ukraine. Those in Ukraine experienced K. Oksamytna their living standards, mental health, and work patterns being disrupted by Russia’s terrorist tactics of targeting civilian objects and energy infrastructure; those outside Ukraine had to deal with ‘survivor guilt’ (Axyonova and Lozka 2023). Eventually, many researchers, both in Ukraine and abroad, found a ‘war-life balance’, while still being concerned about not producing more academic ‘outputs’ or not doing enough for Ukraine. For some Ukrainian researchers based abroad, the pressure to maintain high levels of productivity in order to attain (more senior) academic positions stemmed not only from the quest for wealth or prestige but also the preparations for absorbing further shocks associated with the continued Russian aggression (more relatives and friends could require assistance) or the desire to donate to Ukrainian NGOs helping the frontline. Wherever they were based, Ukrainian researchers fulfilled additional duties in support of their communities, which was one of the practical challenges they faced in participating in international knowledge production. Tone (self)policing In addition to these challenges, Ukrainian colleagues chose their words especially carefully when speaking or writing about the war. They might have been apprehensive that some of their statements would make ‘core Western’ audiences uncomfortable, such as refusals to discuss reconciliation between Ukrainians and Russians during ongoing mass atrocities. This could, in turn, as some feared, weaken the support for Ukraine in the long run: Ukrainians were accused of being ‘warmongers’ when they expressed support for their country’s resistance to the Russian aggression. Some avoided mentions of graphic violence out of fear that ‘emotional’ testimonies would be dismissed, especially if they came from women scholars (Kurylo 2023; Tsymbalyuk 2023). Interestingly, emotional testimonies were sought after at certain stages of the war and in specific arenas: as Chaban and Headley (2023: 12) observed, in the first months of the full-scale invasion, the media were often ‘looking for emotional responses from academics with personal connection to the war rather than [ways] to hear their informed analysis’. Similarly, Hendl (2022: 81) noted that Ukrainian voices, which ‘used to be deemed biased and untrustworthy, suddenly in wartime...[were] being sought, to fill knowledge gaps and popular demand for the anticipated emotional performance’. Yet as time passed, Ukrainian voices became sought-after for being nonemotional, for example, for being able to ‘connect’ the case of Ukraine to ‘broader’ IR discussions. For this reason, it’s unclear whether a return to pre-February 2022 status quo ante looked likely and whethere Ukrainian scholars who spoke out vocally against the Russian aggression and described the horrors of Russian war crimes accurately would again be dismissed as ‘irrational, emotional, paranoid, biased and Russophobic’, unlike ‘Western’ experts who positioned themselves as ‘noble, rational, impartial, qualified and civilised’ (Hendl 2022: 70). It was rare (but not impossible) to encounter spaces where emotions were neither silenced nor instrumentalised for public performance. For example, at a presentation of a book on Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine fascism in Russia (Garner 2023), an audience member from a country that had also experienced Russian aggression ended their remarks with an apology for being emotional. The book author responded that no one should apologise for being emotional because what was happening was ‘fucked up’. This was an unusually straightforward affirmation of what Ukrainians (or Georgians, or Syrians) thought of the world around them. Another aspect of tone self-policing entailed being careful not to emphasise too much the policy failures by the ‘core West’ that had enabled the Russian aggression. Ukrainian scholars were wary of being perceived as ungrateful for the military, economic, and diplomatic support provided to Ukraine. Yet tone (self)policing prevented the broader scholarly community from benefitting fully from unique perspectives that Ukrainian researchers have. It also perpetuated the fiction that ‘full impartiality and detachment’ is possible or desirable in research on violence and injustice (Vogel and Musamba 2022, 8). The subconscious work of checking if public or scholarly arguments were ‘too much’ made Ukrainian researchers slower at their work in times when the speed at which research is ‘produced’ is privileged (Stavrevska et al 2023; Kessi et al. 2020). Furthermore, when Ukrainians researchers self-policed their tone or did not intervene to correct misconceptions about their country, it left them with a feeling of guilt for not defending the Ukrainian cause (Kurylo 2023). Yet speaking candidly risked alienating research communities that could be expected to offer sympathy to the Ukrainian cause, as I explore below. Sympathy and solidarity Ukrainian voices did not always find a sympathetic reception in circles that may describe themselves as ‘critical’, ‘postcolonial’, or ‘feminist’ (Kurylo 2023; O’Sullivan and Krulišová 2023; Sonevytsky 2022; Hendl 2022). As Mälksoo’s (2021b) argued, Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) ‘experience with colonialism and imperialism [is] too distinct from that of the global South to be an organic ally in the debates on decolonising knowledge production in IR’. Therefore, the ‘critique of postcolonial inclusion’ often excluded CEE (Hájková 2022: 101). However, some voices in critical scholarship recognised that ‘Ukraine should be supported in its struggle against occupation and genocide on the grounds not only of human rights but of national self-determination and opposition to imperialism, colonialism and land grabbing’ (Hall 2023, 42). Yet there were also voices urging Ukraine to give up in the mistaken hope for a return to the pre-February 2022 era of complacency and ignorance about Russian imperialism. Sometimes, these calls were made in the name of global (food) security, or because Ukrainians were paternalistically seen as incapable of seeing their own best interest or knowing history, as the phrase ‘all wars end at the negotiating table’ exemplified (clearly, not all cases of war termination are negotiated settlements). Additionally, the (justified) focus on ‘Western’ crimes created a situation in which ‘the biased focus on western perpetrators or even subtle anti-Americanism K. Oksamytna has prevented exposure of Russia as an imperial actor’ (Düvell and Lapshyna 2022: 210).2 The restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, demanded by the 141-to-7 majority in the General Assembly, was framed as benefiting only the US. This led to such bizarre developments as the May 2023 resolution of the UK University and College Union that called, among other things, upon the UK government to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine,3 which would significantly undermine Ukraine’s ability to continue its self-defence. I do not know if during the Battle for Kyiv, British NLAWs or American Javelins stopped Russian troops 40 kilometres from the house where my parents live, so every time I hear about the ‘West’ allegedly ‘pumping Ukraine with weapons’, I flinch. Furthermore, critical studies often juxtapose themselves with ‘liberal’ worldviews and question ‘core Western’ notions and institutions. Again, with the crucial disclaimer that I can only speak about some Ukrainians, many in Ukraine experienced liberalism and capitalism in ways that differed from the ways in which they were experienced in both the ‘core West’ and the ‘Global South’. The standard narrative is that Soviet economic stability, even if it was coupled with unfreedom, gave way to the ‘wild 1990s’ from which Ukraine struggled to recover. In reality, during the last decades of the Soviet rule, Ukrainians, unless part of nomenklatura, endured shortages of basic goods, not ‘only’ political or cultural repression. While the 1990s were undoubtedly difficult (as the result of the dismantling of the Soviet colonial economy aimed at preventing self-sufficiency of its republics), decades of economic growth followed, barring a drop in Ukraine’s GDP due to the 2008 financial crisis and an even steeper decline due to the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2014. While poverty and the lack of social protections in Ukraine were serious problems that governments worked to address, in 2017, Ukraine was the world’s most equal country by the Gini index. The examples of Lithuania and Estonia, whose GDP per capita is higher than that of Spain or Portugal, underscored the transformative impact of the end of Soviet communism in CEE. Thus, Ukraine’s experience with liberalism and capitalism differed from that of the ‘Global South’, which endured legacies of European colonial extraction, or the ‘core West’, which in some cases entailed extreme wealth accumulation by the ultrarich at the expense of racialised poor. By contrast, in independent Ukraine, many found a degree of economic independence and prosperity after previous generations had suffered from Soviet expropriation of property that targeted Ukrainians with brutal force, including through genocidal violence in the 1930s. Both Soviet and Nazi symbols are banned in Ukraine (as well as in several other CEE countries), so encountering hammer and sickle in public spaces came as a shock to Ukrainian students or researchers displaced to the UK. Liberalism is perceived favourably by most Ukrainians (after all, Zelenskyy’s party is liberal) as they associated it with rights-enhancing policies. 2 On the long history of denying and downplaying non-Western imperialism and colonialism, see Lachlan McNameeis, ‘Settler Colonialism’, Aeon, 5 October 2023, available at https://aeon.co/essays/ settler-colonialism-is-not-distinctly-western-or-european (viewed 5 October 2023). 3 For coverage of the events, see Hamish Morrison, ‘UCU Sparks Row With Call to Stop Sending Arms to Ukraine’, The National, 29 May 2023, available at https://www.thenational.scot/news/23554258.ucusparks-row-call-stop-sending-arms-ukraine (viewed 29 September 2023). Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine Therefore, the narratives that attributed all the world’s ills to liberalism and capitalism (see Makarychev and Nizhnikau 2023) did not resonate with all Ukrainian researchers and activists. The expectation that scholars from Southestern, Central, or Eastern Europe have a special interest or expertise in Marxist theory (e.g. Alejandro 2022) might create one more pigeonhole into which researchers from CEE are placed, leading to disappointment when they do not conform to those expectations. Scholars on the political left also harbour a distrust of nationalism. While postcolonial scholars recognise the role of national resistance against foreign domination (see Törnquist-Plewa and Yurchuk 2019 for the application of Fanon’s notion of ‘anticolonial nationalism’ to Ukraine), many are still wary of nationalism, including wartime Ukrainian nationalism. CEE in particular is often seen through the lenses of far-right ideologies (O’Sullivan and Krulišová 2023), and countries outside the ‘core West’ are in general suspected of being prone to nationalism of the exclusionary kind (Dudko 2023). Yet this is not the case for mainstream contemporary Ukrainian nationalism, which, as Onuch and Hale (2022) document, is characterised by civic attachment to the Ukrainian state and not rooted in language, ethnicity, or enmity towards any group (except for, I must add, the groups involved in the ongoing armed aggression against Ukraine). In this way, Ukrainians’ lived experiences may stand in the way of their inclusion in scholarly communities that should be sympathetic to a country fighting a foreign invasion. This is especially unfortunate given that the postcolonial scholarship on foreign interventions can deepen our understanding of the imperial nature of the Russian invasion (Oksamytna 2023; see Kušić 2021 for another example). Concluding reflections Having outlined several barriers that Ukrainian scholars may face, practically and intellectually, in generating knowledge on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I suggest several ways of strengthening dialogues between different research communities. First, there are laudable initiatives by Ukrainian activists, journalists, and artists to build connections with survivors of war, imperialism, and mass atrocities in other regions of the world. Late Victoria Amelina, who brought Colombian writers and journalists to the frontline regions of Ukraine, was one such example. Another example was the invitation of Peter Biar Ajak, a South Sudanese activist, to the Ukrainian Spaces podcast, where a fascinating discussion took place on how the Yalta Conference of 1945 has a similar meaning for CEE as the Berlin Conference of 1884 has for Africa.4 Such initiates can make a valuable contribution to building global solidarities. Collaborations and co-authorship between scholars based in, or working on, the ‘Global East’ and the ‘Global South’ would be productive, despite the career incentives for each research community to work with academics in the ‘core West’. In case research funding is redirected towards the study of the ‘Global 4 Maksym Eristavi and Valeria Voshchevska, ‘South Sudan, We See You, with Peter Biar Ajak’, Ukrainian Spaces, 16 November 2022, https://podcastaddict.com/ukrainianspaces/episode/148548275. K. Oksamytna East’, those who work in or on the region should find ways of maintaining or developing dialogues and collaborations with scholars of and in the ‘Global South’. Yet there are also risks that Ukrainian researchers who chose to work on Ukraine might get sidelined by large international teams for whom the war is just another case study – of military aid flows, the economic impact of war, or wartime sexual violence.5 When this ‘new academic gold rush’ (Tsymbalyuk 2023: 9) begins – most likely the very moment Ukraine is deemed safe for fieldwork – Ukrainians who will agree to participate in surveys, focus groups, and interviews will find themselves in the position of providers of research data, being asked potentially trauma-inducing questions, such as whether they ‘feel Russian’ or about their wartime experiences.6 ‘Local’ Ukrainian researchers who will agree to work as fixers or translators will find themselves overworked while reliving the horrors of the war, which is a typical occurrence across ‘post-conflict’ settings (Mwambari 2019). Particularly vulnerable groups of Ukrainians, for instance, children who have survived Russian abduction, might become over-researched. In order to prevent such negative repercussions of studying the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as other conflicts, academics need to continue looking for ways to do research in more empathetic, responsible, and self-aware ways. References Alejandro, Audrey. (2022) ‘Do International Relations Scholars Not Care about Central and Eastern Europe or Do They Just Take the Region for Granted? A Conclusion to the Special Issue’, Journal of International Relations and Development 24 (4): 1001–13. Axyonova, Vera and Katsiaryna Lozka. (2023) ‘“We Are at War”: Reflections on Positionality and Research as Negotiation in Post-2022 Ukraine’, Journal of International Relations and Development. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00297-z. Burlyuk, Olga. (2019) ‘Fending off a Triple Inferiority Complex in Academia: An Autoethnography’, Journal of Narrative Politics 6 (1): 28–50. Chaban, Natalia, and James Headley. (2023) ‘Responsibility Not to Be Silent: Academic Knowledge Production about the War against Ukraine and Knowledge Diplomacy’. Journal of International Relations and Development. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00300-7. Dudko, Oksana. (2023) ‘Gate-Crashing “European” and “Slavic” Area Studies: Can Ukrainian Studies Transform the Fields?’ Canadian Slavonic Papers 65 (2): 174–89. Düvell, Franck, and Iryna Lapshyna. (2022) ‘On War in Ukraine, Double Standards and the Epistemological Ignoring of the Global East’. International Migration 60 (4): 209–12. Garner, Ian. (2023). Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth. Hurst. Hájková, Anna. (2022) ‘The Crumbs From Your Table’. Gender Studies 26: 101–3. Hall, Derek. (2023) ‘Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Critical Agrarian Studies’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 50 (1): 26–46. Hendl, Tereza. (2022) ‘Towards Accounting for Russian Imperialism and Building Meaningful Transnational Feminist Solidarity with Ukraine’. Gender Studies 26: 62–90. 5 The author is grateful to Felicity Gray for a conversation clarifying her thinking on this point. According to June 2023 opinion poll, 78 percent of Ukrainians had close relatives or friends who had been injured or killed due to the Russian invasion, with 63 percent reporting having a close relative or friend who died. Kyiv Institute of Sociology, ‘How Many Ukrainians Have Close Relatives and Friends Who Were Injured / Killed by the Russian Invasion’, available at https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat= reports&id=1254&page=1 (viewed 29 September 2023). 6 Global dialogues during the Russian invasion of Ukraine Kaczmarska, Katarzyna and Stefanie Ortmann. (2021) ‘IR Theory and Area Studies: A Plea for Displaced Knowledge about International Politics’. Journal of International Relations and Development 24 (4): 820–47. Kessi, Shose, Zoe Marks and Elelwani Ramugondo. (2020) ‘Decolonizing African Studies’. Critical African Studies 12 (3): 271–82. Khromeychuk, Olesya. (2022) ‘Where Is Ukraine?’ Royal Society of Arts Journal, available at https:// www.thersa.org/comment/2022/06/where-is-ukraine. Kurylo, Bohdana. (2023) ‘The Ukrainian Subject, Hierarchies of Knowledge Production and the Everyday: An Autoethnographic Narrative’. Journal of International Relations and Development. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00310-5. Kušić, Katarina. (2021) ‘Balkan Subjects in Intervention Literature: The Politics of Overrepresentation and Reconstruction’. Journal of International Relations and Development 24 (4): 910–31. Labuda, Patryk I. (2023) ‘Beyond Rhetoric: Interrogating the Eurocentric Critique of International Criminal Law’s Selectivity in the Wake of the 2022 Ukraine Invasion’. Leiden Journal of International Law. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156523000237. Makarychev, Andrey, and Ryhor Nizhnikau. (2023) ‘Normalize and Rationalize: Intellectuals of Statecraft and Russia’s War in Ukraine’. Journal of International Relations and Development. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00299-x. Mälksoo, Maria. (2021a). ‘Captive Minds: The Function and Agency of Eastern Europe in International Security Studies’. Journal of International Relations and Development 24 (4): 866–89. Mälksoo, Maria. (2021b). ‘Uses of “the East” in International Studies: Provincialising IR from Central and Eastern Europe’. Journal of International Relations and Development 24 (4): 811–19. Marchais, Gauthier, Paulin Bazuzi and Aimable Amani Lameke. (2020) ‘“The Data Is Gold, and We Are the Gold-Diggers”: Whiteness, Race and Contemporary Academic Research in Eastern DRC’. Critical African Studies 12 (3): 372–94. Mwambari, David. (2019) ‘Local Positionality in the Production of Knowledge in Northern Uganda’. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919864845. Oksamytna, Kseniya. (2023) ‘Imperialism, Supremacy, and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine’. Contemporary Security Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2023.2259661. Onuch, Olga and Henry E. Hale. (2022) The Zelensky Effect. Hurst. O’Sullivan, Míla and Kateřina Krulišová. (2023) ‘Central European Subalterns Speak Security (Too): Towards a Truly Post-Western Feminist Security Studies’. Journal of International Relations and Development. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00302-5. Sonevytsky, Maria. (2022) ‘What Is Ukraine? Notes on Epistemic Imperialism’. Topos 2: 21–30. Stavrevska, Elena B, Sladjana Lazic, Vjosa Musliu, Dženeta Karabegović, Julija Sardelić and Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik. (2023) ‘Of Love and Frustration as Post-Yugoslav Women Scholars: Learning and Unlearning the Coloniality of IR in the Context of Global North Academia’. International Political Sociology 17 (2): 1–20. Törnquist-Plewa, Barbara and Yuliya Yurchuk. (2019) ‘Memory Politics in Contemporary Ukraine: Reflections from the Postcolonial Perspective’. Memory Studies 12 (6): 699–720. Tsymbalyuk, Darya. (2023) ‘What My Body Taught Me about Being a Scholar of Ukraine and from Ukraine in Times of Russia’s War of Aggression’. Journal of International Relations and Development. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-023-00298-y. Vogel, Christoph, and Josaphat Musamba. (2022). ‘Towards a Politics of Collaborative Worldmaking: Ethics, Epistemologies and Mutual Positionalities in Conflict Research’. Ethnography. https:// doi.org/10.1177/14661381221090895. Zvobgo, Kelebogile, Arturo C. Sotomayor, Maria Rost Rublee, Meredith Loken, George Karavas, and Constance Duncombe. (2023). ‘Race and Racial Exclusion in Security Studies: A Survey of Scholars’. Security Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230880. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. K. Oksamytna Dr. Kseniya Oksamytna is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Conflict, Security, and Development Research Group at King’s College London. Her research interests are international organisations (in particular, decision-making, resourcing, and inequalities in international bureaucracies) and peace operations. She is the author of Advocacy and Change in International Organizations: Communication, Protection, and Reconstruction in UN Peacekeeping (Oxford University Press, 2023).