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Research

Current research projects at the Department of East European Studies

Currently, various projects are being carried out at the department in diverse disciplines such as political science, media studies, cultural studies, migration studies and sociology. The research focus includes all countries of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmid

Ivan Gončarov gehört zu den wenigen Autoren seiner Generation, die eine erfolgreiche und lange Karriere in der zaristischen Bürokratie absolvierten. Er reihte sich als Wirklicher Staatsrat in die viertoberste Dienstkategorie der russischen Bürokratie ein. Er gehörte damit zur absoluten Spitze im Staatsdienst, die nur von 0.7 % der gesamten Beamtenschaft erreicht wurde. Dieser steile Aufstieg ist um so bemerkenswerter als Gončarov von seiner sozialen Herkunft her gar nicht zu einer solchen Stellung prädisponiert war. Diese Tatsache lässt sich etwa am Lebenslauf seines Bruders belegen, der Gymnasiallehrer in der Provinzstadt Simbirsk wurde. Gončarovs Doppelexistenz als Autor und hoher Staatsbeamter bildete im Russland der vierziger und fünfziger Jahre die Ausnahme. Die anderen grossen Romanciers Turgenev, Dostoevskij und Tolstoj übernehmen zwar in jungen Jahren ebenfalls offizielle Funktionen, der Staats- oder Militärdienst bleibt jedoch in ihren Biographien nur eine Episode. Mit anderen Worten: Das literarische Feld in Russland beginnt sich seit etwa 1830 vom Machtfeld zu emanzipieren; die Autoren suchen eine neue professionelle Identität, die ausserhalb der staatlichen Klassifikationsschemata liegt.

The project of a history of Ukrainian literature attempts to reconstruct the ideological, aesthetic and social framework that defined the production and reception of texts in a given time period. This is a clear departure from the plan of a history of Ukrainian literature that is being prepared by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. That project relies heavily on literary portraits on the one hand and on descriptions of genre evolution on the other hand. In the plan for this 10 volume work, authors are grouped together in rather abstract time marks like "literature of the 30's to 60's in the 19th century". The academic history purports to follow the principles of "objectivity" and to let its objects "talk for themselves". Such an aim ignores the necessarily narrative nature of any historiographical account and seeks objective truth in a phenomenon that is deeply ambivalent: Each writer seeks to impose his subjective truth on his readers – and to take this textual strategy as an "objective information" amounts to a deep misunderstanding of literary hermeneutics. The ultimate rationale behind such an attitude may be the unwillingness to reconsider or even revise the traditional canon of Ukrainian literature. A first short draft for the planned volume may be found here: „Kleine Geschichte einer grossen Literatur". 

PD Dr. Elena Denisova-Schmidt

This project focuses on two key areas of post-Soviet life where corruption is often endemic and where anti-corruption practices can best be studied: the realms of business and higher education.

This project looks behind the façade of Russian elections in the recent decades to explain the lack of electoral integrity and other forms of malpractice from within.

Contributing to the ongoing theoretical discussions and developing innovative techniques to mitigate corruption, this large-scale project put Eastern European cases into more global context.

Dr. Alexander Meienberger

This research project explores how contemporary Russophone literature addresses and helps overcome stigma associated with illnesses such as HIV, cancer, and tuberculosis. By analyzing literary works and personal narratives, the project examines how writing becomes a tool for confronting societal taboos, fostering empathy, and reshaping public perceptions of these diseases. Through its focus on the transformative power of storytelling, the study highlights the role of literature in breaking down barriers of silence and stigma in contemporary society.

The dissertation project aims to investigate Russian soft power using the example of the Russian foundation "Russkij mir" and its extensive network in Germany and Austria. Not only instruments of Russia's foreign policy but also existing structures of the foundation in these countries are analysed.

Dr. Oleksandra Tarkhanova

 

A qualitative, interview-based research project has been conducted in cooperation with Daryna Pyrogova starting from the summer of 2022. The goal of the project is to explore agency in forced displacement by tracing decision-making processes and choices made by displaced people following Russian aggression in Ukraine. We conducted and analysed 30 interviews with internally displaced persons in Ukraine and people who were displaced to several European countries. The research shows that agency takes different shapes in displacement, that timing and conditions under which decisions are made are crucial in making choices on the route, and that constructed rationalities behind these choices on destinations are unexpectedly diverse.

A qualitative and ethnographic research project has been conducted since the summer of 2020 on citizenship relations in Eastern Ukraine. The goal of the project is to explore state-citizen interactions at the state welfare offices and border crossings along the front line and in the occupied regions in Eastern Ukraine. Together with colleagues in Ukraine, I conducted 20 interviews with internally displaced persons and residents of the occupied territories who cross the former ‘contact line’ in Eastern Ukraine regularly and 20 interviews with state welfare officials in institutions along the ‘contact line’ on the government-controlled territory. Besides that, I carried out ethnographic observations of state-citizen interactions in welfare offices in the summer of 2021. The research shows citizens’ strategies to negotiate their status and position as displaced vis-à-vis the state and the power of social citizenship to maintain the connection to the state even under occupation.

An ongoing investigation on gender relations in Ukraine following the decades-long neoliberalization, conservative and emancipatory policies, as well as the recent fundamental societal transformations caused by the war and mass displacement.

Breiteneicher Felix Hans

This intersectional qualitative research project is based upon critical geopolitical and constructivist theories combined with ideational as well as discourse analyses of Germany’s historic geopolitical self-understanding and the current political discourse on Eurasia as a geostrategic ‘Greater Space’. The dissertation thesis compares changes in the Federal Government’s foreign policy approaches towards three representative geographical case regions – Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia – with their respective geospatial actors since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The work’s findings are meant to contribute towards a more coherent contemporary understanding of the ‘Eurasian Question’ in a European liberal-democratic framework.

Gafarov Orkhan

The research project explores how small states in the region can maintain independence under the pressure of global powers. The focus is on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, which have different historical trajectories, resources, and foreign policy strategies. The study analyzes how internal factors (institutions, resources, elites) interact with external influences (EU, Russia, regional alliances). Special attention is given to the role of energy and infrastructure projects as well as international organizations. The aim is to identify the conditions under which small states can avoid becoming arenas of geopolitical rivalry and act as independent players in the international system.

Sophie Harper

The ongoing research project examines how artificial intelligence is changing Russia's strategy with regard to disinformation and propaganda. The project focuses on disinformation and manipulation of large language models (LLM) in the context of the war in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in 2022. Using a mixed methods approach, qualitative and quantitative language models from democratic and authoritarian states are examined.

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