The Art of Mapping Whirlwinds. Highlights from a Lecture by Dr Yuliya Yurchenko

In late November, our resident, Dr Yuliya Yurchenko, gave a lecture at UCU titled "The Art of Mapping Whirlwinds: Challenges and Opportunities of Documenting Inequality Amidst Russo-Ukrainian War."

Dr Yurchenko, a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Greenwich, UK, focused her talk on the practical dimension of conducting intersectional research during wartime, particularly in the context of documenting inequality. What deserves close attention? Why do people’s lived experiences make an issue more representative rather than render the research biased?

Together with the audience, we examined concrete situations involving people’s vulnerability and analysed the factors that tend to emerge in societies affected by crises such as war.

“Depending on how you choose to look at the problem, and how agents are embedded in the economic structure, that will determine the kind of answers you get. So it is important to see every individual as part of the system in which they operate, to understand where they are positioned and how much power they do or do not have.”

We are deeply grateful to UCU’s Future of Heritage Master’s programme for this collaboration.