Contributors

Raluca Csernatoni is a fellow at Carnegie Europa and a professor at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS), Brussels School of Governance (BSoG), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Brussels, Belgium. Her emails are: Raluca.Csernatoni@ceip.org and Raluca.Csernatoni@vub.be.

Allyson Edwards is a senior lecturer in global histories and international relations at Bath Spa University. Her work focuses on the militarization of youth in Russia since the 1990s. Her most recent research used a feminist lens to analyze the militarization of young people in Russia since the mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. She has published recently on this topic in International Affairs and Communist and Post-Communist Studies. Her work has also featured in The Conversation, New Eastern Europe, and the Russian Analytical Digest.

Kateřina Krulišová is an associate professor in international relations at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her work focuses on gender and security issues, namely the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), anti-gender movements and radicalisation in CEE, and perpetration of violence and crimes in conflicts. She has published in International Affairs, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Journal of International Relations and Development.

Anna Kvit is a sociologist whose work lies at the intersection of military sociology, gender studies, and peace and conflict studies. Her research explores the gendered dimensions of war, with a particular focus on women in the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014. Anna has conducted empirical research on women in the Ukrainian military, the reintegration of veterans into civilian life, and the broader gendered impacts of conflict on both civilians and policy frameworks. She co-authored the “Invisible Battalion” research series, which documented and analysed the experiences of women in Ukraine’s military sector and informed debates on gender equality in defence.

Alongside her research, Anna has been engaged in policy development and advocacy on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in Ukraine. She has contributed to the development of WPS policies and supported their implementation at national and local levels. She has also collaborated with government bodies and international organizations to advance gender equality in the defense and security sector of Ukraine.

Anna has co-taught Military Sociology at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and was a visiting research fellow at University College London, Department of European and International Social and Political Studies.

Anna holds a BA in sociology from National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine) and an MA in global politicaleconomy from the University of Kassel (Germany).

Tamara Martsenyuk holds a PhD in sociology; she is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine). Her research interest relates to gender and social structure, including women’s participation in the protests and women’s access to the military. In 2015–2023, Tamara (with the research team) conducted five sociological studies called “Invisible Battalion” that demonstrated the successes and challenges of gender equality implementation in the Ukrainian armed forces and the military education, the status of female veterans, and the problem of sexual harassment in the military. Martsenyuk is a member of the International Sociological Association (ISA), the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), and other professional bodies. She authored chapters in Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine (2024), Dispossession: Anthropological Perspectives on Russia’s War Against Ukraine (2023), Ukraine’s Many Faces: Land, People, and Culture Revisited (2023), and other books. Her papers have been published in Women’s Studies International Forum, Sexuality & Culture, Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Problems of Post-Communism, Ukrainian Analytical Digest, and others. In 2023, she received the Emma Goldman Award for outstanding research on feminist and inequality issues.

Dr. Jenny Mathers is a senior lecturer in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. Her research expertise spans area studies (Ukraine and Russia) and gender, conflict and security. Her work has been published in International Affairs, Review of International Political Economy, Europe-Asia Studies, Civil Wars, Journal of Strategic Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, the Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies (2025), Making War on Bodies: Militarisation, Aesthetics, and Embodiment (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Routledge Handbook of Russian Security (2019), Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia (Routledge, 2018), and Women and Wars: Contested Histories, Uncertain Futures (Polity, 2012). She co-edited and contributed to Heroism and Global Politics (with Veronica Kitchen, Routledge 2018) and The Military and Society in Post-Soviet Russia (with Stephen Webber, Manchester University Press, 2005). She frequently publishes in The Conversation and is often interviewed about Russia’s war in Ukraine for British and international news media outlets. She has been invited to address policy communities, including a workshop for the Portuguese Ministry of Defense on gender and the war in Ukraine. She is currently working on two book projects: one that examines Russia’s war in Ukraine from the perspective of feminist security studies; and a co-authored volume with Allyson Edwards (Bath Spa University) about the militarization of children in Putin’s Russia.

Maryna Shevtsova is a senior post-doctoral FWO fellow at KU Leuven. She holds a PhD in political science from Humboldt University, Berlin. Before starting her work at KU Leuven, she was an MSCA EUTOPIA Fellow at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her publications include the book, LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey: Exporting Europe? (Routledge, 2021) and an edited volume, Feminist Perspectives of Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices (Lexington Books, 2024).

Olena Strelnyk obtained her Dr. Habil. degree in sociology in 2018 at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She is the author of Childcare as Work: A Sociological Perspective on Mothering (2017) and numerous publications on gender inequality in Ukraine, motherhood and care work, as well as the impact of war on women and gender roles in Ukraine. She has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan (2016), the Prague Civil Society Centre (2019), and the Technical University of Munich (2022–2024). Currently, she works as a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She focuses on various aspects of the war’s impact on women, gender roles, and care work.

Kateryna Zarembo is an associate senior fellow at the New Europe Center in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her email is Kateryna.zarembo@gmail.com.