Watching Russia From Afar: Adapting to an Age of War, Repression, and Emigration
Monday, April 29, 2024 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin)
This event at Bard College Berlin will bring together prominent journalists, sociologists, and academics who have spent their careers tracking developments in Russian politics and society. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the many convulsions that have resulted, have made this work exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Conducting interviews or field research is extraordinarily fraught. But monitoring events and developments from abroad contains no less difficulties. Led in discussion by BCB's writer-in-residence, expert panelists will discuss the adjustments in their work and share their adaptations and methodologies. What is difficult to understand without being on the ground? But at the same time, what is impossible to measure from inside Russia? What should we admit we don't and can't know? The evening promises an open, enlightening, and educational conversation for all those interested in following and making sense of events in Russia and their relevance for Western societies.
Register here.
Valerie Hopkins is an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering the war in Ukraine, as well as Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. She covered the Balkans and eastern Europe for a decade, most recently for the Financial Times, before moving to Moscow to join The New York Times. She is a 2022 recipient of Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence and the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) Distinguished Fellow Award.
Svetlana Erpyleva is a researcher with the Public Sociology Laboratory and a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen. Her articles have been published in American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Childhood, Current Sociology, Journal of Youth Studies, Sociological Forums, and a number of Russian and international academic journals and media. Currently, she coordinates a large-scale research project on how Russians perceive the war in Ukraine.
Joshua Yaffa is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He is also the author of "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia," which won the Orwell Prize in 2021. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, National Geographic, and other publications. He is currently the inaugural writer-in-residence at Bard College Berlin and was previously a fellow at The American Academy in Berlin.
Email: [email protected]