Hope on the Ground: Lived Resilience during the War in Ukraine

Experience the Event

Presented by The Nanovic Institute for European Studies

In the crucible of total war, how does a nation protect its soul? Join leading scholars as they deconstruct Ukraine’s “pedagogy of freedom.” From “immunizing” students against disinformation to the “optimal hope” of civil society, discover how active academic solidarity and symbolic recognition forge a resilient mental shield for the future.

Speakers include:

• A. Austin Garey (Kennan Institute): “Wartime Pedagogy: Shifting Priorities in Ukrainian Educational Sciences”
• Sarah D. Phillips (Indiana): “Three Years of War, Three Years of Support. The Nonresidential Scholars Program for Ukraine: Successes and Challenges.”
• Sarah Wilson Sokhey (Colorado): “Ukrainians and Civil Society Organizations: Dimensions of Hope and Resilience During Wartime”
• Kristina Šliavaitė (Vilnius University): “‘So many people helped us’: Help, Empathy, and Care as Signs of Humanity in the Narratives of War and Migration of Refugees from Ukraine in Lithuania”

Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine is a collaboration between Notre Dame’s  Nanovic Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, and Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). The conference, hosted at the University of Notre Dame in March 2025, focused on the positive and corrective response to this destruction, exploring reasons for hope, sources of hope, and the politics and ethics of hope in Ukraine. How is hope powerful or even revolutionary? How does it encourage resilience and recovery? And, above all, how can we build and promote the integral development of hope in Ukraine? The conference explored the concept, dynamics, and practices of hope through keynote addresses, panel discussions, the arts, and liturgical observances. For more information visit the event website.

Co-sponsors included:

• Department of German, Slavic, and Eurasian Studies
• Kellogg Institute for International Studies
• Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
• Notre Dame Democracy Initiative
• Notre Dame Global
• Office of the President, University of Notre Dame
• The Program of Creative Writing
• Raclin Murphy Museum of Art
• Ukrainian Catholic University

Meet the Speaker: A. Austin Garey

A. Austin Garey is an anthropologist and research scholar at the Kennan Institute specializing in post-Soviet institutions in Russia and Ukraine. She directs Education Corps Ukraine, connecting Ukrainian schools with EFL teaching resources. Her research on semiotics and cultural production appears in the Journal of Childhood, Education, and Society, Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Science, and Michigan Feminist Studies. Her forthcoming book, Leagues of Laughter: War, Comedy, and the Soviet Legacy, examines how a Soviet-era youth activity evolved amid national collapse and war, uncovering the entwinement of humor and oppression in the cultural context of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Meet the Speaker: Sarah D. Phillips

Sarah D. Phillips is a professor of anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. She specializes in medical anthropology, disability studies, and gender studies, with a focus on Ukraine and Russia. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, exploring cultural symbolism surrounding the Chernobyl disaster. Dr. Phillips is the author of Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine and Women’s Social Activism in the New Ukraine. Her research, supported by grants from the NSF and IREX, has advanced Slavic and East European studies. She also served as Director of Indiana University’s Russian and East European Institute.

Meet the Speaker: Sarah Wilson Sokhey

Dr. Sokhey is an associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned her Ph.D. from Ohio State in 2010. Her research examines the intersection of politics and economics and has been featured in leading journals such as Party Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, and Economics & Politics. Her book, The Political Economy of Pension Policy Reversal in Post-Communist Countries (Cambridge University Press), earned the prestigious Hewett Book Prize from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Since September 2023, she has co-organized the “Civil Society & Ukrainian Resilience” webinar series, highlighting Ukrainian efforts during wartime.

Meet the Speaker: Kristina Šliavaitė

Kristina Šliavaitė is a sociocultural anthropologist who earned her Ph.D. from Lund University (Sweden) in 2005. Her research spans ethnic identity, inter-ethnic interaction, social memory, the interplay of ethnic and religious identities, and forced migration and displacement. She has contributed to numerous collaborative research projects addressing these themes. Currently, she serves as an associate professor and senior researcher at the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies at Vilnius University.