Dr Viktoria Sereda

Dr Viktoria Sereda is a fellow of the Imre Kertesz Kolleg University of Jena, senior researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and professor at the Department of Sociology of the Ukrainian Catholic University. She studied in L’viv, Budapest and Edinburgh and obtained her doctorate in 2006 with a study of the influence of regionalism on the formation of sociopolitical identity and historical memory in Ukraine. Prior to her current positions, she taught sociology at the National University of Lviv starting in 2002. In the Spring semester of 2021, she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Basel and taught a course “Migration and belonging. Ukraine in glocal perspective after 1991” and at the summer school organized by the SwissPeace on ’Ukraine – Opportunities and Challenges for Dialogue’. In 2016-2020 she was the recurrent MAPA Research Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, where she used sociological data to develop a digital atlas of social changes in Ukrainian society, including cross-regional mobility and internal displacement (IDPs) after 2014. She has over 25 years of experience in conducting and leading research, analysis and policy advice and 10 years' experience in researching Ukrainian migration affairs - in particular labor and forced migration, migration governance.

Sereda has either led or participated in over 30 sociological research projects: “Present Ukrainian refugees: Main Reasons, Strategies of Resettlement, Difficulties of Adaptation” (2014-15); “Trust in insecure environments: the Crimean Tatar community after the annexation of Crimea” (2015), “Homo militants” (2015-16); “Displaced cultural spaces: current Ukrainian refugees” (2016); “Women and war: everyday life on the occupied territories” (2017); “Ukraine's hidden tragedy: understanding the outcomes of population displacement from the country's war torn regions” (2016-17); “Challenges of contemporary migration: Ukrainian community in Poland” (2019), “The power of the disempowered: civic activism of Ukrainian IDPs” (2021), “Displaced Ukrainians from Crimea and Donbas in Switzerland, Germany and Turkey” (2021), “Social reception and inclusion of refugees with children from Ukraine in Poland, Germany and Ireland) (2022). From 2011 to 2017, she was the head of the sociological team for the project “Region, Nation and Beyond: An Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Reconceptualization of Ukraine” organised by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Relevant publications: Fedinec Csilla, Szereda Viktória (2009), Ukrajna színeváltozása 1991–2008. Politikai, gazdasági, kulturális és nemzetiségi attitűdök (Changes in Ukraine in 1991-2008. Politics, economics, culture and attitudes towards national minorities). Budapest: Kalligram; Sereda, V., Mikheieva, O. (forthcoming 2023), Dilemmas of knowledge production and peacebuilding: case of war-torn Donbas and temporarily occupied territories of Crimea. International Affairs; Sereda,V. (forthcoming 2023), Power of disempowered: civic activism of Ukrainian IDPs. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations; Sereda, V. (2020) ‘Social Distancing’ and Hierarchies of Belonging: The Case of Displaced Population from Donbas and Crimea, Europe-Asia Studies, 72(3), 404-431. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2020.1719043; Sereda, V. (2020), ‘In Search of Belonging: Rethinking the Other in the Historical Memory of Ukrainian IDPs’, The Ideology and Politics Journal 2(16), 83-106, https://doi.org/10.36169/2227-6068.2020.01.00014, Mikheieva, O., Susak, V. Eds. (2021), Vyklyky suchasnoi mihratsii: ukrainska spilnota v Polshchi. Analitychnii zvit. Lviv: UCU-KolirPro.