Month: December 2022

In September 2022, the Academy of Finland made funding available to attach Ukrainian scholars to ongoing research projects in Finland. Judith Pallot and Brendan Humphreys secured funding from this call. Under this programme, we have been able to invite Mykhailo Romanov to be attached to GULAGECHOES and the Yugoslavian Prison Nationalism projects in the Aleksanteri Institute. Under current Ukrainian regulations, Mykhailo will be able to join us in person for only one month and otherwise will be contributing to both projects remotely.

Mykhailo is a scholar of penitentiary law and a prisoners’ rights activist. He is an Associate Professor at the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and at the Poltava University of Economics and Trade. He has PhD in Penal Law from the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and is an author of over forty scientific publications including four monographs and two co-authored books. He is also a penitentiary expert for the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) and a temporary member of the working group on drafting the law on penitentiary system in Ukraine.

26th-28th October 2002. The annual Aleksanteri Conference gave members of the Yugoslavian Prison Nationalism had the opportunity to present their findings to the broad section of the academic, civil society and foreign affairs community that attended this year’s conference. The theme of the conference arising out of the war in Ukraine was entitled “The New Age of Insecurity”. The project members gave papers in two panels: “War and Repression. Russia´s War against Ukraine in Discursive, Comparative and Legal Perspective” and “The Role of Penalty in Post-Community State Formation in Former Soviet and Yugoslavian space”. Brendan Humphreys gave the paper, Incarceration and Population Expulsion: Patterns from the Balkan and Ukraine Wars and Olga Kantokoski presented The Western Balkan Model of Carceral Punishment in the Context of the Penal Programme of Modernity. PI Judith Pallot’s presentation was Violence and Repression: the Carceral Fate of the Opponents of the War in Ukraine.

28th October. At the closing ceremony of the Aleksanteri Conference we were able to announce that Gulagechoes and Yugoslavian Prison Nationalism have been chosen to be the co-organisers of the Aleksanteri conference together with the law Faculty’s Development in post-Soviet law group. The conference’s theme will be: “Decolonising space in the global east: Legal choices, Political Transformation, Carceral practices”. The members of the organising committee explained the theme of the conference and expressed the hope that they would see everyone back at the Aleksanteri at the same time next year.

On 4th November, Dr Olga Kantokoski and Dr. Brendan Humphreys were invited to join a panel organised and hosted by the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), the Helsinki-based conflict resolution institution, founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Athisaari. The Kosovo delegation included Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi, and Professor Fisnik Korenica of the Kosovo Justice Ministry. Also present were scholars from the Finnish Institute of Foreign Affairs (FIIA). The discussion and networking were valuable for establishing contacts between the Yugoslavian Prison Nationalism project and relevant representatives of the government of Kosovo.

11th August 2022. Visit to the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia. The PI and Dr Brendan Humphreys were received by H.E. the Ambassador to the Republic of Finland, Mr Josip Buljević with whom they had a fruitful and informative discussion on the theme of the Yugoslavian Prison Nationalism project.

31st October 2022. Visit to the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia. The PI and Dr Olga Kantokoski were received by H.E. the Ambassador to the Republic of Finland Mr Saša Obradović with whom they had a fruitful and informative discussion on the theme of the Yugoslavian Prison Nationalism project.