Assistant Professor Suzanne Harris-Brandts, alongside Carleton University colleagues, has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Connection Grant for the project “Global Consequences of Displacement from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: Space, Place, and Pluralism.”  

The grant will unite policymakers, academics, NGO representatives, and displaced peoples at a workshop hosted and live-streamed by Ottawa’s Global Centre for Pluralism, November 3-4, 2022. 

Participants will form a diffuse knowledge network, connected through a team website that will contain podcasts and teaching material online. They will produce conference proceedings through a special issue of Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.  

Professor Jeff Sahadeo, of the Political Science Department and the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, leads the grant. 

The co-investigators are: 

•  Dr. Harris-Brandts, Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism; 

•  Professor David Carment, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs; 

•  Adjunct Research Professor Milana Nikolko, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies; 

•  Instructor David Sichinava, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. 

Project collaborators are: 

•  Associate Professor James Milner, Political Science Department; 

•  Associate Professor Martin Geiger, Political Science Department; 

•  Mustafa Alio, Local Engagement Refugee Research Network; 

•  Matthew Burkard, Global Centre for Pluralism. 

“We face an immediate need to assess overlaps and misalignments between acute humanitarian assistance and longer-term consequences of this substantial redrawing of Eastern Europe’s and Eurasia’s demographic maps and futures,” the organizers say. 

“The ongoing crisis of displaced communities, asylum seekers, migrant workers, and trafficked persons tied to this assault is preoccupying policymakers at national and local levels, international and community NGOs, alongside ordinary citizens.”  

More project information, including the complete event program, will be announced soon. 

Russia’s War in Ukraine has set an entire region in motion. Millions of Ukrainians have fled in the face of violence, moving west within their country or across borders to major European cities, as well as abroad to Canada. Neighbouring countries in Eurasia have witnessed an influx of not only Ukrainians but also Russians leaving their country under increasingly authoritarian conditions.  

Projects on Russian disinformation, trauma in journalism, and displacement caused by the War in Ukraine are among those receiving Connection Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) this year. 

The Connection Grant recognizes projects that “increase the accessibility and use of social sciences and humanities research knowledge among academic and non-academic audiences.”