Das Leibniz-Forschungsnetzwerk Östliches Europa organisiert in Kooperation mit SCIENCE AT RISK eine öffentliche Vortragsreihe mit gefährdeten Wissenschaftler*innen aus der Ukraine. Unter dem Titel “Medicine, Mental Health, and Power: Ukraine’s Past and Present” orientiert sich die Vortragsreihe am vom Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt ausgerufenen „Wissenschaftsjahr 2026 – Medizin der Zukunft“ – dabei wird der Blick auf Medizin und Gesundheit in der Ukraine in der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart gelenkt. Folgende Vorträge sind geplant:

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Donnerstag, 12. November 2026, 17:00 Uhr
“Staying, Moving, Enduring: Mental Health of Ukrainian Academic Staff During Wartime”

Prof. Dr. Natalia Tsybuliak (Depa¬tment of Applied Psychology, Berdyansk State Pedagogical University, Ukraine)

Veranstaltungsort: Leibniz-Institut für ökologische Raumentwicklung (IÖR), Weberplatz 1, 01217 Dresden

Russia’s full-scale invasion transformed the lives and working conditions of Ukrainian academic staff. This lecture begins with the experience of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University, which was relocated from the occupied city of Berdiansk and forced to continue as a “university without walls.” It then turns to a broader Ukrainian story: how academic staff continue teaching and research under conditions of war, uncertainty, internal displacement, migration abroad, and institutional disruption. Drawing on empirical studies of burnout, anxiety, and depression among Ukrainian academic staff, the lecture explores different ways of inhabiting academic work during war – staying, moving, and enduring. The central question is not who suffers most, but how everyone is affected differently, and what these differences reveal about vulnerability, resilience, and the hidden costs of academic continuity during prolonged war.

Natalia Tsybuliak is an Associate Professor at Berdyansk State Pedagogical University, a relocated Ukrainian university. Her research focuses on mental health and institutional support in Ukrainian academiaduring war, with particular attention to academic staff. She also works on responsible and transparent uses of generative AI in research.

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Dienstag, 24. November 2026, 15:00 Uhr
““My body knows this noise“: Researching the embodied memory of war and displacement from within”

Dr. Alona Tron (Institute of Philosophy and Sociolo y of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

Veranstaltungsort: Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF), Am Neuen Markt 1, 14467 Potsdam

How does war persist in people’s bodies after they have reached safety? Drawing on interviews with refugees from Ukraine conducted as part of the U-CORE research project – including people who were forced to flee their homes twice, in 2014 and again in 2022 – this lecture asks: what can historians learn about the embodied memory of war and forced displacement from oral history sources? The lecture also examines the impact of the researcher’s personal experience and positionality. In projects documenting an ongoing war, the line between those who study forced displacement and those who experience it is often blurred. The author discusses what shared experiences bring to light during interviews, what this entails for the interviewer, and why researchers’ vulnerability deserves the same methodological attention as that of their respondents.

Alona Tron is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, working within the U-CORE project. She is a historian specializing in oral history, diaspora studies, and memory studies. She received her doctorate from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, where she subsequently taught at the Faculty of History within the Public History study program until 2023.

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Mittwoch, 02. Dezember 2026, 18:00 Uhr
“Changes in Medicine, Changes in Rule: The Logic and Limits of Tsarist Empire in Right-Bank Ukraine (Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries)”

Dr. Kateryna Pasichnyk (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv)

Veranstaltungsort: Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Alte Universitätsstraße 19, 55116 Mainz

Eastern Podolia (Podillia in Ukrainian) became one of the provinces of Right-Bank Ukraine created by the Russian Empire during its large-scale westward expansion in the late eighteenth century. This territorial expansion resulted from the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This presentation will look at how the empire made sense of the local medical landscape, as well as at both state-supervised medical initiatives and private medical practice after the introduction of imperial medical infrastructure and legislation in the Podolian province. It highlights continuities in medical traditions as well as changes that resulted from migration during military campaigns. By exploring the understudied period of changing rule in Podolia through the lens of medicine, the presentation ultimately aims to provide further insights into the limits and logic of imperial rule.

Kateryna Pasichnyk is a Senior Lecturer in History at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She earned her BA in History from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, her MA in Comparative History from Central European University; and defended her PhD thesis, “Healing in the Russian Empire: Legal Norms, Medical Perceptions and Diseased Bodies in the Medical Disputes over Improper Treatment (1749–1803),” at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Her research focuses on empire and the history of medicine.

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Alle Vorträge finden auf Englisch statt.

Die Veranstaltungen werden in Präsenz durchgeführt. Ein Livestream und/oder Videoaufzeichnungen einzelner Vorträge sind geplant und werden auf dem YouTube-Kanal von SCIENCE AT RISK abrufbar sein: https://www.youtube.com/@ScieRisk
Mehr Informationen unter https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/forschung/leibniz-forschungsnetzwerke/oestliches-europa und https://science-at-risk.org/de/ sowie auf den Websites der einzelnen Forschungseinrichtungen.

Im Leibniz-Forschungsnetzwerk Östliches Europa sind seit 2015 über zwanzig Institute der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft vereint, die schwerpunktmäßig oder in Projekten zum und mit dem östlichen Europa arbeiten.

Das SCIENCE AT RISK Emergency Office ist ein Projekt des Akademischen Netzwerks Osteuropa, akno e.V., das Wissenschaftler*innen und Studierende unterstützt, die vom Krieg in der Ukraine oder von politischer Repression in Belarus und Russland betroffen sind.