Picture: Shendl Copitman; Noomi Weinryb presenting the research project at Paideia’s 25-Year Conference in May 2025
What were the effects on Jewish life and culture in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion started in 2022? In collaboration with Paideia, a research team including Noomi Weinryb, associate professor in Business Studies at Södertörn University and Paideia alumna, has published an extensive research on the topic in the recent book “Civil Society Resilience During War – Organizing Jewish Life And Culture In Ukraine After Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion”. Together with Zhanna Kravchenko, associate professor in Sociology and co-author of the study, Noomi answered three questions about the book.
How did the research project come to be?
“The starting point was to find a way to engage and support Paideia’s Ukrainian alumni as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine unfolded. The project came about in dialogue with Paideia and the Annika and Gabriel Urwitz Foundation. At Södertörn University we had already designed a similar cooperative research plan for Ukrainian alumni from another program we had been teaching in, but with Paideia we could carry it out to its full potential. We were happy and grateful to be able to collaborate with Paideia and its Ukrainian alumni to create the book.”
Which challenges did you meet in your research?
“There were many challenges involved. One was the fast pace at which we had to organize the research to capture what was going on in real time and take necessary safety precautions for all involved. Another challenge was to use the sometimes-patchy data we could access and combine it with other sources to build a solid empirical data set that we could analyze and theorize from.”
What do you hope the book can contribute?
“First and foremost, we hope the book can testify to the enormous effort that was made in Ukraine by the by Jewish organizations and activists to sustain the Jewish community and support Ukrainian civil society resilience at large. This is especially important as it testifies to the potential to mobilize Jewish life and culture for universal values and support of human rights at large, not just for particularistic reasons. The case studies show how the Jewish community helped both Jews and non-Jews. This is the big story of the book. Secondly, we hope that the book can help both practitioners and academics to theorize and consider different aspects of civil society resilience during war, not the least the importance of cultural and community aspects in place pre-dating a war. Finally, we hope that the book can open for future discussions on how to conduct research in this type of context, which is not always accounted for in the mainstream research practices of social science.”
“Civil Society Resilience During War – Organizing Jewish Life And Culture In Ukraine After Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion ” is open access and free to download here, and can be purchased as a Hardcover Book.