The project examines how state-citizen relations in Ukraine are being reconfigured under conditions of Russia’s full-scale invasion, mass displacement, and occupation. Using qualitative and ethnographic methods, it investigates how people enact, contest, and redefine citizenship in times of crisis.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian state has faced severe challenges to its sovereignty, territorial control, and its ability to maintain meaningful relationships with citizens. As state institutions struggled to assert control, provide services, fulfill citizens’ rights, and stay connected with displaced populations and those living under occupation, Ukrainian citizens responded in diverse and often extraordinary ways.
This project explores how citizenship is being fundamentally reconfigured under such conditions of crisis. It focuses on three key encounters between the state and citizens: internally displaced persons, citizens who lived under occupation, and civic volunteers. Using qualitative methods—including in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork—the research examines how individuals practice, negotiate, and contest citizenship during a sovereignty crisis. By drawing on critical citizenship studies, the project reveals how, even amid war, displacement, and institutional disruption, citizenship becomes a space of resilience, creativity, and political agency.
On the 14th and 15th of April, the "Unequal Citizenship and Transnational Mobilisation of Polish, Czech and Ukrainian Roma in the Face of the War in Ukraine" (ROCIT) seminar took place in Warsaw with project partners from the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Etnologický ústav AV ČR) and the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University (Prague) (Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy). Dr. Oleksandra Tarkhanova participated as a guest speaker.
Dr. Oleksandra Tarkhanova leads the research project “Radical Reconfiguration of State-Citizen Relations in Ukraine,” funded by the SNSF Ambizione Grant. A sociologist specializing in qualitative and ethnographic research, she focuses on citizenship, displacement, and gender relations in Ukraine. She is also an associate researcher at the University of Neuchâtel for the NCCR-on-the-move project, “Dealing with Crises and Liminal Situations: The Agency of Ukrainian and Syrian Forced Migrants in Three National Contexts.” Dr. Tarkhanova earned her PhD in sociology from Bielefeld University, an MA in gender studies from Lund University, and a BA from the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla University.” Her book, Compulsory Motherhood, Paternalistic State? Ukrainian Gender Politics and the Subject of Woman, was published by Palgrave in 2021.
PhD in Sociology, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology (The Ethnology Institute, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). She was a research analyst in the projects: "WARPATH: stories of the rescue of people with disabilities during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine", "Art for all: the situation with observance for the cultural rights of people with disabilities in Ukraine", "You can believe: the history of people with disabilities from 1945 to 2020 (Germany, Ukraine)", "Be the first: stories of civil activists for the rights of people with disabilities due to intellectual disabilities in Ukraine in the 1990s", and other. Co-author of the book "History is not without us: the formation of the movement for the rights of people with disabilities in Ukraine" (in Ukrainian). Scientific interests: social (in)justice, disability studies, intellectual disability studies.