Emma Rimpiläinen

I am a social anthropologist specialising in mobility and displacement in the Ukrainian context. My research has thus far examined mobility as it relates to the contemporary state, but recently I have been also developing an interest in materiality and historical anthropology.

I completed my doctoral thesis in social anthropology at the University of Oxford in 2021. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ukraine and Russia, my thesis examines displacement in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region since 2014. It makes an intervention into theorising displacement by showing that moving or being removed from place is neither the sole cause nor manifestation of displacement. Rather, mobility may be a tactic for overcoming displacement in conditions when place breaks down and people lose social networks, employment, and subsistence. As a consequence, I argue that displacement could be conceptualised in two ways: first, as it is conventionally understood as a forced removal from place, and, secondly, as a breakdown of place, whether through mobility or some other process.

Prior to my doctoral degree, I completed a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Area Studies at Oxford and graduated from the master's studies network Expertise in Russian and Eurasian Studies (ExpREES), coordinated by the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki, Finland.

My doctoral thesis focussed on displacement in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine's Donbas region since 2014. I conducted extended ethnographic fieldwork in several cities in both Ukraine and Russia, interviewing civilians who left their homes due to the war, as well as civil society actors, journalists, and bureaucrats. At IRES, I am working on publications stemming from this work. More recently, I have also examined how the European Union's Temporary Protection directive has been implemented in Finland in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.