How to help Ukrainian scholars in need (by Tetiana Zemliakova)

 What to keep in mind if you want to help Ukrainian researchers affected by the war

1. It is great that you opened a short-term emergency fellowship. Yet you must provide support with what happens next — assist with preparing other applications, explain how to deal with research funding agencies in your country, provide all the necessary information about terms of academic employment. Do not just leave researchers alone after they arrive on campus.

2. Provide any assistance possible to support visa applications of researchers’ family members. If you cannot provide them with invitations, help clarify the application requirements, translate documents, and contact your consulate. Yes, there are initiatives dedicated to provide visa support, but try to reduce the number of external actors involved. It is easier for the university to run all the processes than for a stressed, displaced researcher on the move. Do as much as you can, although it might be ‘not your job’ under normal conditions.

3. The same goes for housing and tickets. In your call, indicate whether you are ready to help with relocation or cover travel expenses. Think about informal (or non-institutional) ways of facilitating researchers’ arrival on campus — searching for tickets, translating housing contracts, introducing incoming researchers to each other so they might rent a place together, etc.

4. Think about researchers coming with children: kindergartens, schools — can you contact them and help with placing kinds? You can check in advance with your local schooling system to answer researchers’ questions immediately (same as with visas, really).

5. Eliminate unnecessary application requirements. Contact the referees directly and allow researchers to submit their names only; accept documents submitted via email (not everyone can upload papers through your application portal); be flexible with deadlines; accept applications submitted in any format (you can convert them to .pdf, really), etc. Just keep in mind that not every scholar has access to computers and/or stable internet at this moment.

6. Don’t require researchers to show up on campus immediately; offer a possibility to make part of a fellowship distantly.

7. Never compare ‘who suffers more.’ At least not aloud. Just accept from the very beginning that the war affects peoples’ lives in a myriad of aspects; they may be unimaginable, unbelievable, unlikely. Sometimes, people are not ready to overshare. Sometimes, people are not ready to admit how unfortunate their condition is. Sometimes, people are not ready to appear miserable. So please, be sympathetic or at least tactful.

8. Consequences of war are difficult to formalize. Researchers do not know your institution’s internal rules and limitations, so you better think in advance and offer what you can deliver.

9. Finally, you should remember at any moment that researchers are seeking help from your university because they aspire to remain professionals. They are not merely seeking food and shelter, but they seek an environment that would allow them to pursue what they cherish. Try to alleviate whatever stands in-between researchers and their work. Your goal is not only to help researchers survive (there is nothing specifically ‘university’ in it, refugee funds can do better than universities) but to help them remain professionals (that is what a university can do).

[from facebook of Tetiana, https://www.facebook.com/lordaauch]