Life in Occupation: Remote Ethnography of the Russo-Ukrainian War
Thursday, March 13, 2025
12:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
12:30 PM New York l 5:30 PM Vienna
The Open Society Hub for the Politics of the Anthropocene (OHPA) presents "Life in Occupation: Remote Ethnography of the Russo-Ukrainian War," a seminar with Vicente Ferraro. The role of bureaucrats, such as teachers, healthcare workers and police officers, has garnered increasing attention in public administration literature. Less explored is their role in wars and conflicts over territorial control. Ferraro's research aims to analyze how wars impact the work of such "street level bureaucrats" and the strategies they adopt to cope with adversities. This talk will focus on the war in Ukraine, the most intense conflict on European soil since World War II. We address education professionals as an SLB subgroup since schools and universities have become pivotal targets of Russian occupation forces— a cultural frontline instrumental in the efforts to legitimize territorial annexation and assimilate local inhabitants.
Vicente Ferraro is a postdoctoral researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil and a visiting researcher at Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS-Berlin). He holds a degree in International Relations, a master’s degree in Applied Politics from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), and a doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of São Paulo. His research focuses on: (a) the Russian occupation of Ukraine, particularly its impact on teachers, education professionals, and local public officials; (b) the wars in Chechnya and Ukraine and their effects on Russian society and politics.