Crimea between the global and the local
Mariehamn 5.3.2014 Sarah Stephan is a researcher at the ÅIPI and also functions as the Project Manager for the project Open Doors that is focusing on gender equality, empowerment and participation in Azerbaijan. Sarah’s research interests include European and Public International Law, in particular post-conflict governance and multilevel governance in the European Union and beyond. Sarah holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from Helsinki University and a Bachelor’s degree in European and Comparative Law from the Hanse Law School of the Universities of Bremen and Oldenburg. The events that took place in Kiev starting in December 2013, the protests at the Maidan square and the recent ousting of president Yanukovych, followed by a change of political elites, had initially not evoked thoughts on the Crimea in me. I have visited the peninsula, the cities Simferopol and Sevastopol, in the autumn 2011 for a summer school on democracy and identity in post-soviet Ukraine with a focus on Crimea. I left with the impression that the Crimea has an identity of its own, is neither simply Ukrainian nor simply Russian. It is much more. The group of students that participated in the summer school was diverse. The local participants reflected, […]