Emma Mateo
Mihaychuk Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
July 2025 - June 2026
Supported by HURI with the Jaroslaw and Nadia Mihaychuk Fellowship Fund
Research Project
"If not us, then who?”: How Civilians under Fire Responded to Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine
Emma is working on a book project that explores the actions and motivations of Ukrainian civilians in high-risk cities who contributed to the war effort following Russia’s 2022 invasion. What motivates such individuals to stay in their place of residence during war, and to engage in conflict and resistance as non-combatants, remains an under-explored question in social science literature. Existing scholarship tends to focus on civilians’ decisions either to flee or to take up arms. But some remain in place and take action as civilians, helping the military, engaging in resistance, or providing humanitarian support - despite facing high risks and uncertain outcomes.
When this phenomenon occurred in Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, it evoked much surprise. Defying expectations, Ukraine did not fall quickly; instead, its people resisted through both military and civilian means. This project investigates how civilians and civil society engaged in Ukraine’s war effort through an in-depth study of three Ukrainian cities that experienced the war in very different ways: Bakhmut, Chernihiv, and Dnipro. The study relies on in-depth interviews with individuals from these three cities gathered during fieldwork in 2023, alongside analysis of local media and social media sources. It seeks not only to shed light on the agency and resistance of Ukrainian civilians following Russia’s full-scale invasion, but also to contribute to wider scholarship on civilian responses to armed conflict.
Biography
Emma Mateo is a social scientist who studies protest, civil society, and political behavior, with regional expertise in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Belarus. Emma’s postdoctoral work currently examines civilian responses to conflict in the case of the Russo-Ukrainian war. This research builds upon methods, knowledge, and theoretical approaches cultivated during Emma’s doctoral work at the University of Oxford, which explored subnational mobilization and repression during mass protests in Ukraine and Belarus. Emma’s interest in the intersection of protest, civil society, media, and technology has led her to make innovative use of social media data, such as Telegram Messenger. Her work has been published in Post-Soviet Affairs and Social Media + Society, and featured at major conferences and expert workshops in the US, Canada, UK, and EU. Emma was previously a Petro Jacyk Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute (2022-2024), and Postdoctoral Researcher at New York University’s Jordan Center (2024-2025). She has also designed and taught courses at Columbia University and Kyiv School of Economics. Emma holds a PhD in Sociology (2022) and MPhil in Russian and East European Studies (2018) from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge. Emma is originally from the UK and speaks Ukrainian, French, and Russian.