About

We are a group of researchers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, and the United States. The centerpiece of the project “Identity and Borders in Flux: The Case of Ukraine” (IBiF) is a two-wave face-to-face panel survey (funded by The British Academy under the “Tackling the UK’s International Challenges” Funding Scheme) to study identity, public opinion, and political behaviour in Ukraine between 2019 and 2021. The project also includes a smaller survey with funding from George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian studies (IERES, Washington, DC) and ZOiS (Berlin). 

Our project revisits the question of whether ethnonational identity is essentially immutable once formed or whether it remains highly situational and politically plastic even in countries polarized along identity lines. To better test these alternatives, we propose innovative methods to untangle the complex relationship between identities, actors interested in shaping them, and political outcomes. Our research explores the relationship between people’s identities and political preferences in today’s Ukraine. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are also addressing how this major health crisis might be impacting both political and health behaviour and vice versa.

Two-Wave Face-to-Face Panel Survey: We will survey a nationally representative sample of adult (18+) citizens of Ukraine as soon as face-to-face interviews once again become possible. We plan to re-interview the same individuals 6-12 months later to see how and if this relationship changes with time, particularly under the influence of local elections and the development of the coronavirus pandemic. This part of the project is funded by the British Academy and results from a collaborative grant proposal involving four researchers:

• Dr. Olga Onuch (University of Manchester), Principal Investigator. 
• Prof. Gwendolyn Sasse (ZOiS/University of Oxford), Co-Investigator.
• Prof. Henry Hale (George Washington University), Co-Investigator.
• Dr. Volodymyr Kulyk (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), Co-Investigator.

April 2020 Telephone Survey: During April 22-24, 2020, we conducted a nationally representative telephone survey of Ukrainian adults through the KIIS April 2020 omnibus survey. This survey, which examines inter-relationships among identity and political and health behaviour, is equally funded by ZOiS and IERES (PI Henry Hale, based at GWU). More information can be found here: https://ibifukraine.com/2020/04/30/april-2020-survey/