As part of the project “Next Generation Global PhDs,” funded by NAWA (Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange), MA Olga Khabibulina completed a three-month research internship in the Russia and Eastern Europe Studies programme at the Oxford School of Global Studies at the University of Oxford.
The internship was supervised by Dr. Nicolette Makovicky, whose guidance helped MA Khabibulina refine her theoretical approaches to analyzing the tax and cultural practices of Georgian migrants living in Poland. The doctoral student is currently working on her dissertation, titled “The Linguistic and Cultural Practices of Georgian Migrants Living in Poland Since 1991,” at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her dissertation is co-supervised by Dr. hab. Anna Engelking, Professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Helena Patzer from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw.
The primary ojectives of the scholarship-funded intership were:
- conducting supplementary archival research using the resources of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford,
- exchanging experiences and insights with fellow doctoral students at the Oxford School of Global Studies, and
- holding individual consultations with the academic supervisor of the internship.
During her stay, Olga Khabibulina gathered critical materials for a chapter on tax practices in the context of the cultural practices of the Georgian migrants and enriched a section discussing the researcher’s positionality while working with various migrant groups.
Additionally, MA Khabibulina had the opportunity to co-conduct two doctoral seminars and attended weekly lectures at the University of Oxford, featuring invited professors from around the world specializing in broadly defined issues related to Eastern studies.
