Ongoing Projects:
Ukraine: An Imagined Borderland
Drawing on research conducted prior to Russia's 2022 invasion, I am currently working on a book monograph (proposal under review) entitled Ukraine: An Imagined Borderland. My book deconstructs the territorial state system in its investigation of the lived experience of nationhood and national belonging. In centering the analysis on territorial borderland areas—a novel approach in both Political Science and International Relations—my research thus explores how space, place, and territory implicate contemporary understandings of citizenship and nationality. Specifically, I use the case of Ukraine, and three of its smaller administrative regions, to analyse nationalism in both micro- and macro-level borderlands; Zakarpattia and Chernihiv as territorial borderlands located near Ukraine’s neighbouring geopolitical entities, and Kirovohrad as the centre of the geographical borderland that is Ukraine. Using a mixed-method approach combining ethnographic research with qualitative interviews, focus groups, and cartographic materials, I critique the assumption that nationalism is primarily constructed through top-down efforts by the state and its institutions.
Separating War from Peace: The (New) Geopolitical Realities of Ukraine’s Borders
(How) do the meanings of Westphalian borders evolve during war? As the grassroots implications of borders during wartimes remain under researched both empirically and theoretically, this study investigates the complex relational and micro-level processes incited by borders during conflict by examining the territorial divisions separating Ukraine and its western neighbours amidst Russia’s war on the country. Using an ‘accidental ethnography’ of the borders that Ukraine shares with Poland, Hungary, and Romania on five trips to and from the country between September 2023 and July 2024, the paper discloses novel insight about how borders both (re)enforce and prompt new geopolitical dynamics during wartimes, which are easily (and often) overlooked in times of peace. The study particularly demonstrates the enduring and evolving role of Ukraine’s borders for structuring the territorial state system, delineating international relations, reinforcing the Westphalian world order, dividing peace and war, and defining the post-1991 territory of Ukraine. In doing so, the paper pushes forward our empirical and theoretical understandings of Westphalian borders during both peace and war, while sparking a larger critical conversation about the role of borders for the study and practice of global politics. The discussion moreover sheds critical light on grassroots dynamics in Ukraine during the Russia-Ukraine war, thus illustrating the value of analysing borders, and especially wartime borders, at micro-scales and through bottom-up and ethnographic methodological approaches.
Losing and Finding Home Twice: Ukrainian Women’s Experiences of Secondary Internal Displacement (with Daryna Dvornichenko)
While much work explores internal displacement, little research has considered the phenomenon of ‘secondary internal displacement,’ where internally displaced persons experience internal displacement a second time. Few, if any, studies have analysed twice internally displaced individuals’ relationships with the notion of ‘home.’ To help address these theoretical and empirical lacunas, this paper investigates the experiences of Ukrainian women internally displaced following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2014 and again after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, specifically examining how they understand and relate to the notion of ‘home.’ Drawing on thirty semi-structured interviews conducted between August 2023 and August 2024, the study reveals that, for twice internally displaced Ukrainian women, ‘home’ represents lost physical places, severed social ties, and a feeling they have (re)established in new ways. As the first paper exploring twice internally displaced women’s relationships with ‘home’ – in Ukraine as well as globally – the project offers important theoretical and empirical insights about secondary internal displacement, and especially, the experiences of women forced to uproot and rebuild their lives more than once. The paper moreover identifies acute grassroots implications of the Russia-Ukraine war that have previously been overlooked.
Imagined Cartographies: A Survey Experiment on Territorial Border Preferences in Western Ukraine (with Carl Müller-Crepon)
As little is currently known about grassroots sentiments regarding cartography and territorial borders, especially within borderland areas, this interdisciplinary project seeks to measure popular preferences over the drawing of interstate borders. This project thus asks what territorial geographies individual citizens prefer, and whether their preferences coincide with the structural causes prevalent in previous research. To answer this question, the project develops and uses a new type of pre-registered survey experiment utilizing maps containing ethnic, historical, geographical, political, and economic features to survey approximately 1200 borderland residents. The analysis is centred on Ukraine's westernmost region of Zakarpattia, given the region's multi-faceted history and position neighbouring four EU states, to untangle the effects of ethnic, geographical, and historical borders on contemporary border preferences, as well as alternative explanations for individual preferences. By asking citizens living in borderland areas to draw their preferred territorial setup of states, the project grants agency to a historical understudied population, and combines geographical and sociological insight, to push forward the existing literature on state-construction and nation-building. The project's empirical findings into the determinants of border preferences by the people who engage with borders most directly in their everyday lives-those in the borderlands-also intrinsically highlight the role and importance of grassroots border preferences for both the study and practice of global politics.
Ukraine: An Imagined Borderland
Drawing on research conducted prior to Russia's 2022 invasion, I am currently working on a book monograph (proposal under review) entitled Ukraine: An Imagined Borderland. My book deconstructs the territorial state system in its investigation of the lived experience of nationhood and national belonging. In centering the analysis on territorial borderland areas—a novel approach in both Political Science and International Relations—my research thus explores how space, place, and territory implicate contemporary understandings of citizenship and nationality. Specifically, I use the case of Ukraine, and three of its smaller administrative regions, to analyse nationalism in both micro- and macro-level borderlands; Zakarpattia and Chernihiv as territorial borderlands located near Ukraine’s neighbouring geopolitical entities, and Kirovohrad as the centre of the geographical borderland that is Ukraine. Using a mixed-method approach combining ethnographic research with qualitative interviews, focus groups, and cartographic materials, I critique the assumption that nationalism is primarily constructed through top-down efforts by the state and its institutions.
Separating War from Peace: The (New) Geopolitical Realities of Ukraine’s Borders
(How) do the meanings of Westphalian borders evolve during war? As the grassroots implications of borders during wartimes remain under researched both empirically and theoretically, this study investigates the complex relational and micro-level processes incited by borders during conflict by examining the territorial divisions separating Ukraine and its western neighbours amidst Russia’s war on the country. Using an ‘accidental ethnography’ of the borders that Ukraine shares with Poland, Hungary, and Romania on five trips to and from the country between September 2023 and July 2024, the paper discloses novel insight about how borders both (re)enforce and prompt new geopolitical dynamics during wartimes, which are easily (and often) overlooked in times of peace. The study particularly demonstrates the enduring and evolving role of Ukraine’s borders for structuring the territorial state system, delineating international relations, reinforcing the Westphalian world order, dividing peace and war, and defining the post-1991 territory of Ukraine. In doing so, the paper pushes forward our empirical and theoretical understandings of Westphalian borders during both peace and war, while sparking a larger critical conversation about the role of borders for the study and practice of global politics. The discussion moreover sheds critical light on grassroots dynamics in Ukraine during the Russia-Ukraine war, thus illustrating the value of analysing borders, and especially wartime borders, at micro-scales and through bottom-up and ethnographic methodological approaches.
Losing and Finding Home Twice: Ukrainian Women’s Experiences of Secondary Internal Displacement (with Daryna Dvornichenko)
While much work explores internal displacement, little research has considered the phenomenon of ‘secondary internal displacement,’ where internally displaced persons experience internal displacement a second time. Few, if any, studies have analysed twice internally displaced individuals’ relationships with the notion of ‘home.’ To help address these theoretical and empirical lacunas, this paper investigates the experiences of Ukrainian women internally displaced following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2014 and again after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, specifically examining how they understand and relate to the notion of ‘home.’ Drawing on thirty semi-structured interviews conducted between August 2023 and August 2024, the study reveals that, for twice internally displaced Ukrainian women, ‘home’ represents lost physical places, severed social ties, and a feeling they have (re)established in new ways. As the first paper exploring twice internally displaced women’s relationships with ‘home’ – in Ukraine as well as globally – the project offers important theoretical and empirical insights about secondary internal displacement, and especially, the experiences of women forced to uproot and rebuild their lives more than once. The paper moreover identifies acute grassroots implications of the Russia-Ukraine war that have previously been overlooked.
Imagined Cartographies: A Survey Experiment on Territorial Border Preferences in Western Ukraine (with Carl Müller-Crepon)
As little is currently known about grassroots sentiments regarding cartography and territorial borders, especially within borderland areas, this interdisciplinary project seeks to measure popular preferences over the drawing of interstate borders. This project thus asks what territorial geographies individual citizens prefer, and whether their preferences coincide with the structural causes prevalent in previous research. To answer this question, the project develops and uses a new type of pre-registered survey experiment utilizing maps containing ethnic, historical, geographical, political, and economic features to survey approximately 1200 borderland residents. The analysis is centred on Ukraine's westernmost region of Zakarpattia, given the region's multi-faceted history and position neighbouring four EU states, to untangle the effects of ethnic, geographical, and historical borders on contemporary border preferences, as well as alternative explanations for individual preferences. By asking citizens living in borderland areas to draw their preferred territorial setup of states, the project grants agency to a historical understudied population, and combines geographical and sociological insight, to push forward the existing literature on state-construction and nation-building. The project's empirical findings into the determinants of border preferences by the people who engage with borders most directly in their everyday lives-those in the borderlands-also intrinsically highlight the role and importance of grassroots border preferences for both the study and practice of global politics.
