33 min
Episode 37. Being a Doctoral Candidate in Times of War with Mariia Vitrukh Qualitative Conversations
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- Education
SUMMARY KEYWORDSukraine, war, people, ukrainian, asu, research, students, education, happening, invasion, qualitative research, february, questions, crimea, russia, universities, fled, podcast, family, momentSPEAKERSTim, MariiaTim 00:15Hello and welcome to qualitative conversations, a podcast hosted by the qualitative research SIG through AERA, the American Education Research Association. I am Tim wells, a postdoctoral research scholar at Arizona State University and guest host for this episode of the podcast. The qualitative conversations podcast doesn't have a regular host. Instead, each episode is organized by our podcast committee. Normally, my role resides in the background coordinating episodes and editing audio, but today I'm behind the mic. In conversation with Mariia Vitrukh. Mariia is a doctoral candidate in the Education Policy and Evaluation Program at Arizona State University. She serves on the QR sig's graduate student committee. In the fall of 2021, Mariia had been in conversation with myself about an episode she had hoped to record for the podcast. That podcast episode was never recorded. This is because only a few months later, on February 24 of 2022, Russia made a full scale invasion into Ukraine taking over 20% of the territory of Ukraine. Over the past few months. Maria is Ukrainian, writing her dissertation on learning experiences of Ukrainian students who moved from war areas in Ukraine and continue education in the context of forced migration. For the past year, she had been living in Ukraine, she left only a month before the invasion to teach courses at ASU and finish her dissertation proposal. The country she left has changed forever. But this hasn't stopped her from returning. I don't think that's yet research to complete. But all of our family remains in Ukraine. So instead of the original podcast that we planned in the fall of 2021, I invited Mariia to the podcast to share her experience of researching and being a doctoral student, in candidate and in times of war. Mariia, I can't thank you enough for your willingness to be on this program. Perhaps we could start with you sharing a bit more about your background for the listeners, what brought you to ASU's doctoral program. And what were you doing beforehand?Mariia 02:41Tim, thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate the opportunity not only to share my experience as a student, but also to talk about the ones in Ukraine.Tim 02:53So what brought you to ASU doctoral program.Mariia 02:57So, after I did my second master's degree at the University of Cambridge, in psychology and education road, I went back to Ukraine and storage, or co founded an NGO Ukrainian Educational Research Association. We did a couple of projects on education in Ukraine. And as a member of the organization I applied for grant was the US State Department. And I collaborated with displaced universities in Ukraine. And those are the universities that moved from Eastern world areas of the country. I worked with them for about three years on the project, doing workshops, and preparing conferences, interviewing people. And I think this collaboration kind of pushed me to think what can I do more to speak about the stories and share the stories of those people, and especially students, and how to say that I was really impressed with what they shared with me. And I think inspired by their example, even though their stories were not the easy ones. And this kind of inspire me to look for PhD programs. So I applied to ASU because it offered an interdisciplinary approach and had a variety of methods to look into the ongoing problems. So I thought that that's a place that where I can find a way to explore not an easy topic of war and how to research war, especially education in the context of war.Tim 04:35Yeah, thanks. That's just a little bit of background that I think might help orient the listeners to this episode and kind of your own (continued)
SUMMARY KEYWORDSukraine, war, people, ukrainian, asu, research, students, education, happening, invasion, qualitative research, february, questions, crimea, russia, universities, fled, podcast, family, momentSPEAKERSTim, MariiaTim 00:15Hello and welcome to qualitative conversations, a podcast hosted by the qualitative research SIG through AERA, the American Education Research Association. I am Tim wells, a postdoctoral research scholar at Arizona State University and guest host for this episode of the podcast. The qualitative conversations podcast doesn't have a regular host. Instead, each episode is organized by our podcast committee. Normally, my role resides in the background coordinating episodes and editing audio, but today I'm behind the mic. In conversation with Mariia Vitrukh. Mariia is a doctoral candidate in the Education Policy and Evaluation Program at Arizona State University. She serves on the QR sig's graduate student committee. In the fall of 2021, Mariia had been in conversation with myself about an episode she had hoped to record for the podcast. That podcast episode was never recorded. This is because only a few months later, on February 24 of 2022, Russia made a full scale invasion into Ukraine taking over 20% of the territory of Ukraine. Over the past few months. Maria is Ukrainian, writing her dissertation on learning experiences of Ukrainian students who moved from war areas in Ukraine and continue education in the context of forced migration. For the past year, she had been living in Ukraine, she left only a month before the invasion to teach courses at ASU and finish her dissertation proposal. The country she left has changed forever. But this hasn't stopped her from returning. I don't think that's yet research to complete. But all of our family remains in Ukraine. So instead of the original podcast that we planned in the fall of 2021, I invited Mariia to the podcast to share her experience of researching and being a doctoral student, in candidate and in times of war. Mariia, I can't thank you enough for your willingness to be on this program. Perhaps we could start with you sharing a bit more about your background for the listeners, what brought you to ASU's doctoral program. And what were you doing beforehand?Mariia 02:41Tim, thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate the opportunity not only to share my experience as a student, but also to talk about the ones in Ukraine.Tim 02:53So what brought you to ASU doctoral program.Mariia 02:57So, after I did my second master's degree at the University of Cambridge, in psychology and education road, I went back to Ukraine and storage, or co founded an NGO Ukrainian Educational Research Association. We did a couple of projects on education in Ukraine. And as a member of the organization I applied for grant was the US State Department. And I collaborated with displaced universities in Ukraine. And those are the universities that moved from Eastern world areas of the country. I worked with them for about three years on the project, doing workshops, and preparing conferences, interviewing people. And I think this collaboration kind of pushed me to think what can I do more to speak about the stories and share the stories of those people, and especially students, and how to say that I was really impressed with what they shared with me. And I think inspired by their example, even though their stories were not the easy ones. And this kind of inspire me to look for PhD programs. So I applied to ASU because it offered an interdisciplinary approach and had a variety of methods to look into the ongoing problems. So I thought that that's a place that where I can find a way to explore not an easy topic of war and how to research war, especially education in the context of war.Tim 04:35Yeah, thanks. That's just a little bit of background that I think might help orient the listeners to this episode and kind of your own (continued)
33 min