Hannah Scott is a Belfer Young Leader Fellow in her second year in the Harvard Kennedy School MPP (Master in Public Policy) program. She has been working with First Aid of the Soul since March 2022 as part of the founding team that worked to formally incorporate the charity. Since then, she has worked as the charity’s…
Ivan Shmatko is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Alberta (Canada). Ivan has been a part of the volunteer movement in Ukraine since February 24. He has done research on policing in Ukraine and the imaginaries that shape how police officers see their work and interact with others. His doctoral research project…
Dafna Rachok is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a Ukrainian-born anthropologist with interests in medical and political anthropology. Her research seeks to understand how vulnerable groups in Ukraine respond to existing HIV prevention and treatment programs and how their attitudes to the state shape their desire…
Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania and an alumna of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Her work examines how Black experience in the Soviet Union shaped Black identity, and how the presence of people of color shaped ideas and understandings of race, ethnicity, and nationality policy in the Soviet…
John Vsetecka is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University. With a specific focus on the Holodomor, his current work seeks to understand how people make sense of tragedies and come to terms with difficult pasts. After being evacuated from a Fulbright placement in Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland due to Russia’s war,…
Daria Savchenko is a PhD Candidate in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, focusing on the anthropology of artificial intelligence. Daria started working with Helping to Leave in May 2022, inspired by a post shared by her friend. The impressive atmosphere of support from other volunteers and the first message, “We are safe,” from Ukrainian evacuees showed…
