Striving for normality in the midst of abnormality – reflections following a visit to Ukraine

In addition to a profusion of complicated logistics, security procedures and night trains, the trip included meetings with Ukrainian colleagues, the signing of Memorandums of Understanding and visits to some areas of Mykolaiv and Kyiv that have been particularly hard hit by Russian missile and drone attacks. Along the way, we also experienced air raid sirens and visits to underground shelters. More about that later.

In many ways, the streets of Kyiv still look completely normal. However, you don’t have to venture too far into the city before it becomes unmistakably apparent that Ukraine is a country caught up in a war of survival: huge posters and billboards urging young men to volunteer for various military units are everywhere; the wounded veterans of war are impossible to miss; and the railway and bus stations are seething with uniformed men travelling to and from the front.

In parallel with all of this, normality prevails. Children walk to and from school; cafés are in full swing with outdoor serving; there is the usual urban traffic chaos; sun-drenched parks are thronged with dog walkers.

But then there are the air raid sirens. Several times a week, they blare out over Kyiv – and sometimes several times a day (and during the night). Each time the sirens sound, the city’s residents are encouraged to take refuge in underground shelters. Even though the capacity of the city’s shelters is probably nowhere near sufficient. Many of the people we spoke to remarked that the air raid sirens – and their interruptions to a good night’s sleep – are in fact contributing to mental fatigue and difficult learning conditions at the universities.

Many Ukrainians have chosen to cope with the threat of the effectively random missile and drone strikes by simply ignoring them – and the air raid sirens. Per Michael and I witnessed this firsthand when we had to take refuge in a shelter under Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), one beautiful late-summer evening. Many of the Ukrainians in our shelter simply allowed the air raid siren to sound its alarm – and made their way up from the shelter and out into the city.

When we asked a group of teenage girls on their way up to street level whether there was no longer a risk of an air strike, their answer was wreathed in smiles and laughter: ‘No, no – it’s just our neighbour trying to disturb our sleep. We have a date in the city – bye-bye!’ Striving for normality in the midst of abnormality.

In many ways, the state of war and the residents’ endeavours to reintroduce a form of normality also characterise the country’s universities. In Mykolaiv, the city’s Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding has been hit by several – obviously intentional – Russian missile attacks. A significant part of the University’s main campus was in ruins when we visited. Nevertheless, the University’s Rector assured us with a big grin that all teaching activities were going ahead as planned and that it would take more than a few Russian missiles to stop Admiral Makarov.

We encountered one particularly remarkable example of how the students and citizens of the war-torn country are seeking normality in an abnormal time during a visit to the National Technical University of Ukraine ‘Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute’, where once again we were forced to seek shelter beneath the university. This time, with a large group of engineering students.

Their belief in a future for Ukraine and their – completely normal – reflections on the structure of their studies, job opportunities after graduation, the need for access to laboratories and workshops, and their reflections on the gender balance in various engineering programmes made a big impression. The war is obviously presenting challenges – for instance, much of the teaching is being carried out online because the University does not have shelter capacity for all of its students. Nevertheless, the preoccupations of the students did not seem significantly different from those of the students at SDU and other Danish universities.

And in fact, perhaps that is really the main point: it is incredibly human to seek the normality, routines and habits of everyday life in the midst of the chaos of war. You cannot prevent war from invading your life. But by striving for normality, you can prevent war from dominating and controlling your existence.

Our visit to Ukraine is a testament to the dominance of this logic, also at universities.