The panel aims to discuss the challenges cities face today due to wars, focusing on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We will be touching up on questions such as: How do cities, citizens, and institutions deal with war? How does it affect urban life? Is it possible to find a balance between the host communities' solidarity and efficiency when organizing their daily routines amid new obstacles? What possibilities are there to transform the "problems" of migration into strengths for the receiving cities and societies? How can the new immigrants' potential be identified and mobilized to empower the local communities? What can be the next long-term steps in immigration policy and inclusion practices for recent migrants? How can it be shifted from a one-time aid to a proper inclusion of migrants in society?

With the beginning of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine, we witnessed the mass forced displacement of people both inside and outside the country. The response was an almost instantaneous reaction from various civil society organizations, movements, and volunteer groups in Ukraine, Poland, Germany and other countries. They immediately joined the system of aiding the population affected by the war. Similar processes were observed in Ukraine's neighboring countries – Moldova, Poland and others, where the response of civilian structures primarily provided solutions to the rapid displacement of Ukrainians. This situation shows the possibilities of self-organization and self-aid networks, which have both an organized and spontaneous nature. These new forms of civic mobilization and activism, which have primarily outpaced the more formal and cumbersome state response, require attention and rethinking. Their ability to ensure society's resilience in the extreme conditions of war is an essential and universal experience that can be used in addressing such challenges.

Education and Research in Exile

Intensive forced migration to Europe from war zones and authoritarian countries strongly influenced social, political, and intellectual landscapes of Europe in the last decade. Several waves of forced migration including Turkish, Iranian, Syrian in the mid 2010s and Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian in the early 2020s brought a high number of highly educated people to Germany. Among them there are many acting scholars, academics, professors, PhD students, etc. What does the new situation mean for them? Which ways of professional integration/inclusion are more preferable for the academic migrants and for the receiving society: to become a part of the academic institutions and university system here, to establish their own institutions – universities and research institutes in exile or to leave academia and choose a new life path? Intellectuals have been making these choices for almost a decade but little is known about them.

This session aims to discuss the strategies and practices of academic integration/inclusion and answer the following questions:

- What actions are needed by whom?

- Why are they needed?

- How can changes be implemented?

Then we will be able to answer:

- What are pros and cons of the "university in exile" model? For who exactly?

- Is there a need for a specific knowledge brought by the new waves of migrants? To what extent and in what form is this knowledge and expertise valuable for the receiving society as exactly "specific" (the issue of Think Tanks focused on the study of the authoritarian countries / societies these people left).

- Would it make more sense for the educated and skilled migrants from the academic sphere to integrate into existing institutions or to establish new ones?

We discuss new challenges for cities that are becoming (temporary) safe havens for large numbers of refugees. The focus is on three cities: Tbilisi, Kiev and Berlin. The topic was initiated by a curator and artist from Tbilisi, who is concerned about the processes taking place in the city, which has received tens of thousands of Russians in recent months (previously refugees from Abkhazia, Ossetia and Belarus came there). The locals feel that their city is turning into a shelter for those who stay there temporarily, only to leave later. For the newcomers themselves, the city is presented as a "limbo" - between the hell from which they fled and the future paradise (of which they dream). As a result, a complex situation is created in the city - a multitude of closed "bubbles," communities whose members barely communicate with each other and have little involvement in the life of the shelter city. Tensions and conflicts also arise in communication between the "bubbles. We would like to compare the experience of Tbilisi with Kiev, which was also a city-shelter before the war (Russians and Belarusians were coming), and with Berlin as a city that also attracts many migrants from different countries.

The current war of Russia against Ukraine has many roots, one of which is authoritarianism. The systematic and consequential elimination of democratic rights and freedoms in Russia has logically led to the military invasion of Ukraine, together with the terror against civil society within Russia. In fact, this policy has not started in Russia on the 24th of February 2022, but a long time ago. And not solely in Russia. Both democracy and authoritarianism have urban dimensions, so we could and still can observe the struggle and coexistence of the democratic and authoritarian institutions, practices, discourses and tangible forms in urban life and space of post-socialist and, especially, post-Soviet societies. For decades, such things as strict top-down decision-making on urban development, politically motivated urban mega-projects, "one-fits-all" capital-oriented solutions, and other manifestations of "authoritarian urbanism" have been coexisting in our cities with various democratic elements of urban development, e.g., the participatory planning of public spaces and inner yards, the development of bicycle infrastructure, support of bottom-up initiatives and tactical urbanism. Nowadays, Moscow has fantastic parks and embankments full of people. Minsk seems to be one of the cleanest and greenest cities, with one of the most developed bicycling infrastructure. Baku can boast about its fabulous central squares and other public spaces. Tashkent is proud of its murals made by independent artists. Political scientists call such an amalgam of democratic and authoritarian institutes and practices a "hybrid political regime". Perhaps, in the same way, we can speak of a "hybrid urbanism"? How would we characterize it? A set of practical questions to address during the discussion will be: How does this comfortable, healthy, friendly urban environment built according to the most up-to-date urban trends correspond to authoritarian regimes? Is there any correspondence between authoritarianism and the comfort/beauty/high-end developments of the urban environment? What position should professional communities of architects, planners and other experts involved in urban planning and development take in this situation? Shall professionals take part in the participatory design of the so-called "public spaces" in the cities where no public political life is allowed? Do they have the right to advise on developing bicycle or green infrastructure that will be implemented in a top-down and authoritarian manner? This does not seem to be an idle question, as we believe that authoritarianism does not emerge in one moment out of anything but has been gradually built up over the years and decades. The practical questions that are significant for the future of our cities and societies would be: Can we identify the signs of authoritarianism at an urban scale in advance and prevent its development as urban professionals? Which professional activities could withstand authoritarianism, and which would, in contrast, support it at a professional level? How to distinguish them, and how to act?

Feminist Anti-War Resistance is a network of Russian feminists that has been formed to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has groups in numerous cities across the world, including the EU. Some of FAR activists have recently migrated to European cities, and others have lived there for some time. During the first part of the session, we want to hear the impressions from the members of different FAR groups about the ways they work within the contexts of their cities.
After taking a look at the online and offline infrastructures of FAR, we will proceed to the workshop part of the session. Both panelists and guests will be offered to split into groups to together brainstorm about the possibilities of translocal activist solidarity and the role of online and offline instruments in establishing it, as well as the forms and possibilities of migrant activism (e.g. how to build alliances and tackle the structures of oppression in both new and old contexts). The results of the brainstorming will be documented and presented on the resources of FAR.

Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens have left the country. One of the most popular places for their residing has become the South Caucasus. Most Russian citizens settle in the capital cities of Tbilisi, Yerevan and Baku. Batumi (Georgia) and, to a lesser extent, Gyumri (Armenia) have also become target destinations for those who fled Russia. How do Russians explain their reasons for leaving Russia? How is the choice of place to emigrate determined? How do they build relationships and communication with residents of these cities? How do emigrants perceive their host cities, and what do they say about their experiences of living there?

This panel focuses on various complex and contradictory ways in which voice and silence are perceived, performed and enacted in the context of the war in Ukraine, both in the cities of Russia (primarily) and Europe (as related to the urban context of Russia). Through conceptual statements and examples of artistic works, the panel participants will discuss how silence and silencing from above and within, as well as refusal to see and recognize, may intersect and form an oeuvre of the city. How do political repressions reorganize speech and silence in the everyday urban context? What is "the city at peace" (mirnyi gorod), and what is its "peaceful resident" (mirnyi zhitel')? How does silence change, and what channels for empathy reveal when the inner voice is voiced by the other? What role does the militarization of the urban history play in muting the present? How does war create a condition of self-imposed silence in social and artistic research? The outcome of the session is a complexified and nuanced understanding of identities, subject poisons and the political will in relation to the experiences of silence(ing).

We discuss new challenges for cities that are becoming [temporary] safe havens for large numbers of refugees. The focus is on three cities: Tbilisi, Kyiv, and Berlin. The topic was initiated by a curator and artist from Tbilisi, who is concerned about the processes taking place there. Tbilisi has received tens of thousands of Russians in recent months; previously, refugees from Abkhazia, Ossetia, and Belarus came there. The locals feel their city is turning into a temporary shelter for those escaping the war. Even for the newcomers themselves, the city is presented as a "limbo" – between the hell they fled from and the future paradise they dream of. As a result, a complex situation is created in the city – a multitude of closed 'bubble' communities whose members barely communicate with each other and have little involvement in the life of the shelter city. Tensions and conflicts also arise in communication between these bubbles. We would like to compare the experience of Tbilisi with Kyiv, which was also a city-shelter before the war (Russians and Belarusians were coming), and with Berlin as a city that also attracts many migrants from different countries.

Marcel Bleuler is a practice-oriented researcher in the field of social art. After completing his PhD in history of contemporary art, Marcel worked as project manager for a peace building organization, mainly in the South Caucasus. Today he is head of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research and the PhD-program Transforming Environments at the Department of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Madlen Pilz is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS). Her passion is urban change. She carried out research in Quito (Ecuador), in Tbilisi (Georgia), and in Munich (Germany), in my current research I focus on changes and challenges in the field of integration policies in East German cities.

Natalia Vatsadze is an artist and independent curator, one of the founders and member of performing art group "Bouillon" based in 2008, Tbilisi, Georgia. Her artistic research and curatorial work is devoted to performances and socially engaged art in post-soviet reality.

Kostiantyn Doroshenko is a critic, contemporary art curator, publicist, media manager, and radio host. Affiliated curator of the research platform PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine. Author of articles and books devoted to culture, art and society of the post-Soviet states, primarily Ukraine. Curated exhibitions in Ukraine, USA, China, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro.

Masha Sapizhak is a theater maker, interdisciplinary artist, and anti-war activist. Will share her thoughts on those who left Russia, those who stayed, and her collection of testimonials InnerVoice-dot-ru.

Denis Esakov is a multimedia artist and writer. He is interested in the phenomena of knowledge and the unknownness and the space of relations between them. He is the author of the book 'Attentive Curiosity of NotUnderstandingness'.

Gregory Gan is a Russian-Canadian visual anthropologist. He completed his PhD in 2019 at the University of British Columbia and is currently a guest postdoctoral fellow with SFB "Affective Societies" at Freie Universität, where he is completing a feature-length animation on the social history of panel-block homes in Germany and the Soviet Union.

Oleksandra Nenko, MA in Sociology from Kharkiv National University, PhD in Sociology from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine).

Currently Oleksandra is a visiting researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki and, collegium member of Turku Institute for Advanced Studies University of Turku (Finland). Associate professor in MA programme on urban studies at ITMO University (St.-Petersburg, Russia) 2013-2022. Her research interests cover spheres of sociology of the city, urban studies and sociology of the arts.

Andrei Vazyanau, lecturer at European Humanities University (Lithuania); researcher at Minsk Urban Platform (Belarus till 2020, Ukraine 2020-2022, currently Lithuania).

Andrei got his PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Regensburg. His research interests are focused on urban transport, time, and media. In his ethnography Andrei draws on participatory practices, including collaboration with grassroot activists. His fieldwork experience includes Donetsk region of Ukraine, years 2011-2013; Romania, 2015-2016; Belarus 2018-2021.

Wladimir Sgibnev, Senior lecturer at the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (Leipzig), Department of Regional Geography of Europe. TBC

Wladimir also coordinates the research group of mobilities and migration, and heads the Leibniz junior research group "COMODE". Before he started working at the IfL (in November 2012) Wladimir was a Visiting lecturer at the Central Asian Seminar (2011–2012) and a Doctoral studies at the Central Asian Seminar of the Institute of Asian and African Studies of the Humboldt University of Berlin (2009–2012). His research interests are space, peripheral urban regions, mobility and qualitative research methods. Regional focus of his research and expertise: Central and Eastern Europe, post-Soviet region, Central Asia in particular. TBC

Lela Rekhviashvili is a researcher at at the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (Leipzig).

Lela is focusing on political-economy and urban geography with a regional expertise in post-socialist Eastern Europe and Eurasia, particularly South Caucasus and Central Asia. She has published widely on informal economic practices, urban transport and mobility, marketization and social embeddedness, contentious action and politics of public space. Her research increasingly focuses on contestations around infrastructure-led development and role of infrastructures in imagining and (re-)claiming socialist and capitalist modernities.

Oleg Pachenkov, sociologist, a Guest Researcher at the Georg Simmel Zentrum for Metropolitan Studies (GSZ) at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Oleg is also a director of the cross disciplinary education program CO-URBANISM based at the Center "UP" for Urbanism and Participation at European University at St.-Petersburg (Russia), and a member of the team of an NGO "Center for independent social research" (CISR eV, Berlin). Oleg is a co-founder and a member of an initiative "Open Urban Lab" (OUL) in t-Petersburg, Russia. He received his Doctor degree (Candidate of Science in sociology) at the sociology department of the St.-Petersburg State University in 2009. Currently he is working mainly in the fields of urban studies and interdisciplinary urban development projects as a researcher and consultant.

Tuba İnal Çekiç , Off university (https://off-university.com), Hertie School Berlin (TSII Fellow), Humboldt University of Berlin.

Tuba İnal-Çekiç got her Ph.D. degree from the Urban and Regional Planning Department of Yıldız Technical University-Istanbul. She moved to Germany/Berlin in June 2016. She was affiliated with the Department of Social Sciences of Humboldt-Universität as a Senior Einstein Fellow until May 2021. Her research interests are focused on urban movements and urban commons from a participatory governance perspective.

Andrei Vazyanau, lecturer at European Humanities University (Lithuania, https://en.ehu.lt/); researcher at Minsk Urban Platform (Belarus till 2020, Ukraine 2020-2022, currently Lithuania).

Andrei Vazyanau got his PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Regensburg. His research interests are focused on urban transport, time, and media. In his ethnography Andrei draws on participatory practices, including collaboration with grassroot activists. His fieldwork experience includes Donetsk region of Ukraine, years 2011-2013; Romania, 2015-2016; Belarus 2018-2021.

Oxana Timofeeva is a professor of philosophy in St. Petersburg, she is a member of the artistic collective "Chto Delat" ("What is to be done"), and the author of books Solar Politics (Polity 2022), How to Love a Homeland (Kayfa ta, 2020), History of Animals (Bloomsbury 2018) and other books.

Philipp Meuser is a practicing architect and head of DOM publishers, a publishing firm with strong focus on post-colonial and post-socialist topics. Professorships in Kharkiv (Beketov University) and Providence/Rhode Island (Brown University) allowed him to continuously teaching in the fields of architectural theory and history. He is co-founder of Ro3kvit – urban coalition for Ukraine, an international network of experts in urban planning, regional planning, housing, heritage and related topics as economy, law, energy, circularity, sociology and policy making. As an architect, he has been working in crisis regions where safety and security are among the most important planning parameters. Meuser is based in Berlin, Germany.

Lilia Voronkova is a researcher with a background in social anthropology and a curator. She works in interdisciplinary projects on urban research and urban art, organizes and manages informal educational and exchange programs.

Oksana Zaporozhets, Bauhaus University, Weimar (Germany).

Until March 2022, Oksana headed the Laboratory for Urban Sociology at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow (Russia). She moved to Germany in March 2022, used to work at the Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig and Technical University Berlin. Since the Fall 2022 she has been a researcher at the Institute for European Urban Studies (IfEU) at Bauhaus-University Weimar.

Stefan Meister, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik in Berlin, Leiter des Programms Internationale Ordnung und Demokratie.

Dr. Stefan Meister has been the head of DGAP's program on international order and democracy since August 2021. From 2019 until then, he worked as director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation's South Caucasus Office. From 2017 to 2019, Meister was head of the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at DGAP, where he had previously headed its program for Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. Before that, he was a senior policy fellow in the Wider Europe Team at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Berlin and London.

Dr. Sergey Lagodinsky is a German lawyer, author and a Member of the European Parliament (Alliance 90/The Greens). He is the 1st Vice-Chair of the Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs, also working in the Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. He is the Chair of the European Parliament's delegation to Turkey.
Sergey Lagodinsky studied Law in Goettingen and Public Administration at Harvard. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Program Director, later as consultant to the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee. Later on he worked as a lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. From 2012 until joining the European Parliament 2019, he was Director of the Department EU/North America/Turkey of the Heinrich Boell Foundation. Sergey Lagodinsky is a regular guest and commentator in numerous media.

The panel aims at discussing the challenges Russian regional media face after February 24th. What are the coping strategies these media embraced to survive in current de-facto war time censorship and growing pressure from the authorities? How the war affected regional media financial budgets? How regional media can address war-related topics without risking being prosecuted? We will also discuss important ethical dilemma media operating inside of Russia have to deal with: is it justified not to cover war related issues in order to keep working and report on domestic problems relevant for large audience? What language these media can use to report about the war without risking losing part of their audience that was affected by Russia's official pro-war narratives?

Kirill Martynov has been an associate professor at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) since 2007. He was fired from the university in 2020 for political reasons, and together with other professors founded the Free University of Moscow. Since 2014, he has been editor of Novaya Gazeta. After the closure of the media in Russia in April 2022, founder and editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Amanda Henson, Advisor to the Vice Rector for International Affairs, University of Bonn; Cologne/Bonn Academy in Exile (CBA, https://www.cologne-bonn-academy-in-exile.de/en),

Amanda Henson received a Master's degree in International Politics and Global Governance from Aston University in the UK and a Master's degree in Political Science from the University of Bamberg. Her Master's thesis "Politics from Above and Below: Conflicting Narratives of the Crisis in Ukraine" was published in Ostdok last year. For two years, she worked at the DAAD on Erasmus+ projects and began working as an advisor at the Vice Rectorate for International Affairs at the University of Bonn in June of this year, which includes her work in the development and administration of the Cologne/Bonn Academy in Exile.

Oksana Mikheieva (ORCID: 0000-0002-3789-2415) is a DAAD professor at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She is also professor of sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv). In the spring semesters of 2020 and 2022 she was visiting lecturer at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland). She is a member of Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society, and the Ukrainian Sociological Association. Additionally, she serves on the editorial board of the academic peer-reviewed journal "Ukraina Moderna" and the Analytical Information Journal "East" ("Skhid"). She has also participated in more than 20 sociological research projects, in 10 of which she was a principal investigator. She researches a wide range of areas, including the historical aspects of deviant and delinquent behavior, urban studies, paramilitary motivations, forced displacement, migration and has over twenty years of research and teaching experience. In 2016 she was a visiting professor in Ukraine European Dialogue at the Institute for Human Science (Vienna), and in 2015 she was Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellow Harvard University, Ukrainian Research Institute.

Viktoriya Sereda is a sociologist, who is currently Senior Fellow and Director of the research group PRISMA UKRAÏNA: War, Migration and Memory at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Prior to this, she was a fellow at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg, University of Jena. She is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since 2020 and a professor in the department of Sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Iwona Kaliszewska is an assistant professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on intersections among Islam, economy, state and anti-state violence, and more recently on war and humanitarian crisis. Iwona has been conducting research projects in Dagestan and Chechnya since 2004, and lately in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands. Her most recent book "Putin, Violence and Sharia in the North Caucasus" will be soon published by the Cornell University Press.

Berlin is undergoing a big transformation. We tend to pass empty spaces by and think of them with a bit of frustration or sadness as temporary places for something that used to be or is yet to come. But what happens when we change our perspective and perceive them as places full of opportunities?
In this audio walk, we are going on a fantasy journey with protagonists from the Berlin neighbourhood Weißensee who have rediscovered abandoned places and turned them into their experimental playgrounds. They take us on a post-reunification art safari, lead us through the rubble of post-war Berlin, and show us a wild playground of Weißensee. In these places, we experience freedom – even if only for a short time – to imagine anything we want.
The audiowalk was produced and will be led by Katya Romanova, a cultural project manager and designer based in Berlin. "Brachland" is her final university project dedicated to the neighborhood where she lives at. As she was collecting personal stories and memories of different protagonists from Weißensee, places in transition caught her attention: they often go unnoticed but can tell us just as much about the district as other historical and cultural sites. The audiowalk is produced as a part of the bachelor thesis at HTW Berlin in 2022 with the kind support of the KIEZ:MOBIL project.
Registration: https://audiowalk-brachland.eventbrite.de
Starting point: Brotfabrik – Caligariplatz 1, 13086 Berlin

A collaboration of Belarusian avant scene legends, Sveta Ben (cabaret-band "Silver Wedding") and Galina Ozeran (Chikiss), two artists with affluent creative backgrounds. Within the new duet, Sveta is responsible for poetry and music, while Galya is an arrangements and sound production wizard. The show was called "Mirrorball" after the very first song that was co-written by Benka and Chikiss, when this story began in summer 2021 in Berlin.

Sveta Ben: "Our duet was born spontaneously and joyfully, like all good things. I've been exploring the music world of Galya Chikiss for a long while and love her music very much for its intelligence, experimentation and diversity. And last summer I asked Galya (who now resides in Berlin) to help me a little with a small Berlin concert - the idea was to play a few songs together. Galya agreed and the result exceeded expectations. Then we decided to continue collaborating. So far, we've recorded a single, played some collab shows in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Berlin. We'll see now what's next, I think there will be an album.

Galya Chikiss: "Sveta and I have known each other for a very long time growing up on the neighbouring streets of Vitebsk and even going to the same middle school at different times, but I could never even think about such a collaboration. We met in my Berlin studio prior to one of her shows, and somehow played everything at once. I set up my phone camera and posted the first improv video for "Mirrorball" on the Internet. There was a strong feedback, it resonated with many people's hearts. And after the Berlin concert-stream, which a lot of people have watched, it became obvious that these songs are needed and are important for many humans, they should be finished and released".

Lala Huseynova is a social researcher at the Socium Center for Sociological Research based in Baku, Azerbaijan. Her experience includes project management at the peace building organization focused on conflict transformation involving youth and specific professional groups in joint activities in the South Caucasus, project evaluation, design and implementation of the city tours for kids and adults on city history and transformations.

Philip Fedchin, director of the Gagarin center at Bard College, administrator of the Smolny Beyond Borders project, and technology strategist for international education at Bard College Berlin.

Philip Fedchin got his MA in International Studies from the University of Limerick), and a Specialist degree in Art History from St.Petersburg State University. Since November 2020 Philip holds a technology strategist position at Bard College Berlin and is involved in creating an online learning collaborative space for the Open Society University Network. From 1998 to 2021, Philip was a faculty member and also administrator (in different positions from Registrar to Associate Dean) at Smolny College (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University).