Yana Suchikova

Yana Suchikova is the Vice-Rector for Research at a displaced Ukrainian university. In this piece of life writing from our latest Solidarities issue, she writes on the emotional and corporeal experiences of sustaining university teaching during war and occupation in Ukraine — with and without internet, in makeshift shelters, in simultaneous isolation and fragmented togetherness, while displaced and dispersed. Drawing on Boris Vian’s text L’Écume des jours and the 'foam' of their everydays – 'light, sparkling, but short-lived' – Suchikova considers the various 'bubbles' of locality, care, reprieve, freedom, and solidarity she and the students and members of their university create.