PRIO has received new funding from the Swedish research foundation, Østersjøstiftelsen, for an interdisciplinary project involving scholars from Norway, Sweden and Ukraine, to study the human consequences of the war in Ukraine.
While public debate often focuses on military and geopolitical developments, HUMAN-UKR shifts attention to the ordinary people living through the war. The war has caused immense human suffering, environmental degradation, economic disruption, social fragmentation, rapid political shifts, and information warfare. HUMAN-UKR aims to understand these impacts and generate knowledge that can support Ukraine’s resilience and recovery, and enhance preparedness in the Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe.
HUMAN-UKR is a five-year project that brings together behavioural economics, political science, environmental studies, psychology, communication research, sociology and peace and conflict research. It combines large-scale surveys conducted over five years, interviews with veteran families, psychological experiments, economic games, and analysis of spatial data. Core research topics include cooperation, support for democracy, community relations amid environmental damage, subjective well-being, susceptibility to misinformation, veterans’ reintegration, and recovery, resilience, and preparedness in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.
“A ‘human-centered’ perspective means that we place people at the core of theory, research design, data collection, and analysis. We consider experiences, attitudes and behaviours of ordinary citizens as crucial to understanding broader phenomena, such as military resistance, economic resilience, and democratic stability during and after war. For example, understanding whether attacks on civilian infrastructure weaken morale or bolster resistance demands close analysis of individuals’ experiences of, and responses to, violence; and understanding wartime socioeconomic resilience requires examining how people cooperate in daily interactions amid violence. By placing individuals at the centre, we also aim to enhance the project’s translational potential: recommendations on governance, reconstruction and civil–military relations will more likely resonate with communities and foster trust, rather than impose top-down templates,” said Henrikas Bartusevičius, Research Professor at PRIO and co-lead of the project.
HUMAN-UKR involves Henrikas Bartusevičius (PRIO), Stefan Döring (Uppsala University/PRIO), Thomas Hagen (University of Oslo/PRIO), Jonas R. Kunst (BI Norwegian Business School), Ruslana Moskotina (Kyiv School of Economics), Julia Palik (PRIO), Eric Skoog (Swedish Defence University/Uppsala University). Part of the team will be based at Södertörn University.
