Conference Agenda

In times of war and authoritarian rule, taking part in politics can be dangerous, censored, or morally conflicted. This paper looks at how young adults from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus make sense of civic engagement while living under or after repression. Drawing on a study with displaced young leaders from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus who participated in the cross-national educational initiative Eastern European Youth Dialogue, the analysis highlights how personal stories—told in letters, conversations, and autobiographical accounts—show strategies of survival, responsibility, and resistance amid war, displacement, and authoritarian rule. The analysis uses dynamic narrative inquiry (Daiute, 2014), which treats stories not as static reflections but as active tools people use to test ideas, position themselves, and negotiate contradictions in repressive contexts. Instead of showing indifference, withdrawal from state-controlled institutions often reflects conscious choices: a rejection of corruption, a way to stay safe, or an ethical stance against violence. Across the narratives, participants described orientations such as justice, resistance, critical patriotism, peace orientation, and relational solidarity. These perspectives illustrate how people respond to crisis by developing their own ways of understanding civic life when official channels are closed or dangerous. By presenting the voices of young adults navigating these realities, this paper argues that personal storytelling is not only a form of expression but also a way of engaging politically. In dark times, narrative becomes a tool for survival and for imagining alternatives to violence and authoritarianism.

This paper proposes the application of the transtheoretical model, a stage-matched process for effecting change, to better encourage anti-racist behaviors and methods among health care professionals in medical settings. Despite widespread organizational implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are aimed at reducing racial health and healthcare inequities across the United States, the absence of a theoretical framework for change has made it all but impossible to standardize meaningful anti-racist practices – a point of particular concern as President Donald Trump’s administration rolls back DEI efforts and requirements alike. Translational and clinical sciences aim for a gold standard of diversity, equity and inclusion amidst the dual threats of recent policy changes and ongoing complications born of capitalism, but the lack of a clinical and evaluative model for implementation – and lasting change – persists. Psychologists must account for, and solve for, individual differences in readiness to engage in anti-racist behaviors among medical professionals. The transtheoretical model of behavior change is an analytical framework for clinical applications that can facilitate change – even transformation – among individuals working in medical organizations.

How do young refugees in exile create a sense of who they possibly can be and the lives they possibly can live when their future is unpredictable in the most basic sense?

In this presentation, I will propose a methodological design and analytical approach to investigate how young Ukrainian refugees in Norway (in 2025, comprising the largest refugee group in Norway) negotiate their developmental projects together with their peers. They do so in a political climate that seems to welcome transnational practices, but still in a situation where the host country and home country take particular and conflicting interests in them: assimilating the host country’s norms and possible lives on the one hand and preparing for lives as future protectors of the war-torn home country on the other. How do young persons create situations that foster learning about the world and the world-to-be, and who they can be in it? How do they simultaneously shape particular social realities of the world and their place in it (“worlding practices” (Haraway)? I am particularly interested in how the development of their political subjecthood can be explored as connected to their worlding practices and developmental projects.

The specific situation of young Ukrainian refugees highlights general aspects of development for young people: that the future is uncertain and indefinite (Holzkamp), and that nation-states have interests in young people as citizens-to-be (Lee). I will conclude the presentation with a discussion of how personal development can be viewed as entangled with political projects of nations, for Ukrainian refugees as well as for other young people.