Shelter in scholarship: Evidence from a global survey of hosts for displaced Ukrainian scientists
Michael E. Rose, Katarína Juríková, Marina Pelepets, Olga Slivko, Julia Yereshko
Research Policy · 2026 · Volume 55 · Issue 3
DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2026.105425
Abstract
In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the global scientific community launched a range of support offers for displaced Ukrainian scientists. This paper examines the characteristics of these offers that attracted the most interest from Ukrainian scholars. We conduct a survey of hosts offering 2416 support opportunities registered in the #ScienceForUkraine database (22.3% participation rate). 56.9% support offers received at least one eligible application and 47.4% helped at least one Ukrainian scientist. Our analysis reveals that scholarships were more in demand than academic positions, joint applications for funding, or access to resources, and that offers connected to the Humanities were more popular than other disciplines. For hosts, solidarity was the primary motivation to offer help, and the availability of suitable funding was the second most common reason. Focusing on future policy design, our findings imply that support programmes for displaced scientists play a role in motivating hosts to help refugee scholars, and that these programmes should emphasise flexibility and consider the disciplinary composition of the affected academic community.
Keywords
Academic support, Russo-Ukraine war, Science
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