For Bogdana Cherniavska, visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Law at VU University Amsterdam, this scenario became harsh reality when she had to flee Ukraine a month after the Russian invasion.
"You don't know if you are safe, if you can ever teach again," she said.
Bogdana obtained her PhD in 2021 and the world was at her feet. As a lawyer and lecturer at the National Academy of Management in Kyiv, she combined academic work with legal practice. But on 24 February 2022, everything changed. The university closed, the country ended up in chaos, and Bogdana had to leave behind her accumulated career in one fell swoop. "The first few months were surreal," she recalls. "You don't know if you are safe, if you will ever be able to teach again." She fled to the Netherlands, with no plan but one goal: safety. "It became the Netherlands because I heard it is a social country - and because English is spoken more in education here."
From shelter to lecture theatre
First stop in the Netherlands: a shelter. "You have no idea what to do," says Bogdana. "Work? Study? How do you start again?" Until she heard them about VU's Academic Freedom programme, a collaboration with Scholars at Risk. "That changed everything," she acknowledges. "They understood what I needed: not only financial support and a roof over my head, but also a network and the space to think about how to use my knowledge and skills. This is how I helped hundreds of Ukrainian refugees through the Red Cross and Ukraine Legal Network. I could not have done that if I had only been concerned with survival. Thanks to VU Academic Freedom Program, I was able to be more than a victim."
"Thanks to VU Academic Freedom Program, you can be more than a victim."
With help from VU colleagues Wim Huisman, Joris van Wijk and Maarten Bolhuis, Bogdana learned how the university in the Netherlands works. She switched to international law, gave guest lectures and discovered that her experience as a Ukrainian lawyer was valuable: "I could tell students what is really going on in Ukraine. Knowledge I gained not from books, but from experience."
Summer school
But Bogdana wanted to mean more: "I wanted to show that I could do more than give guest lectures. I wanted to build something myself." She organised her own successful, international summer school: Conflict in the Modern World. This established her name, and Bogdana is now a lecturer and researcher at VU University and involved in international projects on war crimes and ecological damage in Ukraine. "I am visible now, not only in the Netherlands, but also in Europe. That's what support from VU Academic Freedom Program does: it opens doors and gives vulnerable scientists a voice and stage." And, equally important: "It ensures that all that knowledge of hard-working, motivated academics is not lost and is passed on!"
