The Russian military invasion of Ukraine that commenced on the February 24, 2022, led to the largest forced migration flows in Europe since WWII. In this episode, Irena Remestwenski (RECET) talks with Dr. Judith Kohlenberger about a rapid-response survey of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Austria. Dr. Kohlenberger sheds light on Ukrainian refugees' sociodemographic background, choice of host country, as well as their return and stay intentions and discusses implications for integration policies.

Judith Kohlenberger a post-doctoral researcher at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) working on forced migration and integration. She was a contributor to the Persons in Austria Survey (DiPAS), one of the first European studies on the human capital of refugees in the fall of 2015, which was awarded the Kurt-Rothschild-Prize. She teaches in the WU masters’ program and at the University of Applied Sciences and is the author of two books, We (2021) and Refugee Paradox (2022).

Western non-governmental organizations such as the World Bank played a crucial role in China’s economic reforms during the 1980s and 1990s. They facilitated dialogues between Chinese economists and their western counterparts, as well as brought in western known-how on free market economy to China, where Soviet-style planned economy had dominated the economic activities since the 1950s. In this podcast, Dr. Federico Pachetti (RECET) and Dr. Sheng Peng (RECET) discuss both the expectations and realities, which western NGOs faced during their participation in China’s great economic transformations.

Federico Pachetti is an associated researcher at RECET and a post-doctoral fellow at Corvinus Institute of Advanced Studies (CIAS), Budapest. Previously, he held positions at New York University (NYU) Shanghai and at London School of Economics (LSE). Federico researches and teaches 20th century international history, with a focus on how shifting dynamics in global political economy shaped the evolution of Sino-American relations during the final decades of the century.

Overshadowed by the military aggression against Ukraine, "Memorial" was banned and forced to close in Russia. The oldest non-governmental organization in the region, dating back to the late Soviet era and Andrey Sakharov's engagement, "Memorial" has been a prominent actor in Human Rights and memory politics. 

Anna Dobrovolskaya is a former Executive Director of the Human Rights Center "Memorial". In this episode, she is talking to RECET's Managing Director Irena Remestwenski on roots, activities, heritage of the movement, and not the least on hope and perspectives for democracy in Russia.