Partnership success aims to build a better future for Ukraine

Jamie Arrowsmith: As Director of Universities UK International, I'm delighted to have the opportunity to reflect on the incredible work that's been done by the University of Portsmouth and Odesa National Polytechnic University as part of the UK-Ukraine Twinning Initiative. Each collaboration is tailored to the specific needs and capabilities of the partners. It takes a huge commitment, a huge amount of effort, time and resources from both of the universities involved, from the academic faculty, from professional teams and professional services that support the partnerships.

Dr Andrii Zharikov: In relation to the UK-Ukraine Twinning Scheme, I'm responsible for the overall oversight of all 26 projects that we have under that initiative.

Dr Myropi Garri: Our project looked at the dynamic capability development in Ukrainian small and medium enterprises. So, to explain a little bit what this is exactly; we wanted to look at the situation at the operational framework within small and medium enterprises in the Ukraine operate or mainly operated before the Russian invasion, before the war, and how this framework changed, if it has, after the invasion.

Dr Emre Cinar: The title of our project was The Governance of Collaborative Public Sector Innovation in Ukraine and Ukraine has been transferring innovations from different countries within different frameworks of international collaboration since the independence in 1991, and some of this activity has been successful and some of this activity has not been successful, and so it's important to understand in which policy domains this innovation activity is intensifying and under which conditions this collaborative public sector innovation activity has been successful.

Dr Aamir Amin: Our objective in this project was to understand what is the current status of digital healthcare in Ukraine, what are the future prospects, what are those areas which need improvement and what can we suggest to the Ministry of Health Care in Ukraine itself?

Dr Jianan Lu: We aimed to investigate the mechanisms from which financial technologies, or FinTech, facilitates Ukraine's economic development and their welfare through the perspective of the household, financial industry and also new markets. Especially, we took the period of Russia's invasion as the observing window, as we collected the real time firsthand fieldwork data from Ukraine, which is really timely and also has broad implications for the market policymakers and also for the studies.

Dr Olena Kovalova: So, we decided to identify the likelihood of the vacuum that could arise in the financial and banking sectors as a result of the military conflict and I would add some information about what results we have obtained and we have already published.

Professor Ashraf Labib: As you know, they have the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the among the top ten nuclear power plants in the world and they are in the conflict zone. So, the Ukrainian scientists, they did some analysis on the hazards that can affect that and could affect the whole of the world, not just Europe, actually. We looked at some scenarios of potential failures of vulnerability of this nuclear power plant, and specifically we compared it to what are the common themes of accident that we know about, the scenarios like Chernobyl and Fukushima. So, under this project we try to evaluate how introduction of this new technological tool would improve student engagement and also their performance essentially in their summative or final assessments.

Dr Maksym Kunitsyn: We hope to find a solution that could benefit Ukraine and the broader sphere of online education. We had three main objectives. The first one was to boost students to revision and understanding. The second objective or aim; enhance the performance. The last one was increase engagement and satisfaction.

Dr Myropi Garri: If we look at the situation of the operational environment of Ukraine before the invasion, findings illustrate an already challenging operational environment. The majority of companies talked about a lot of institutional constraints, including corruption, bureaucracy and red tape, very complicated regulations, high taxation. So, they already were struggling enough because of the environment that they had to operate within. So, we found that the institutional environment was challenging before and still is a main route of concern. But we also found that financial problems, access to finance, entrepreneurial finance is something that affected them before and now even more after the invasion. We found also that an area of concern was the evolution of technology and the fact that they couldn't catch up. They were lacking the skills, the knowledge, the education, the training to understand how technology evolves and how they can use this technology in order to create value, to exploit opportunities, to add value to their proposition for their products or services.

Dr Emre Cinar: Our project consists of two parts. The first part was a systematic review of the existing academic evidence on the innovation in Ukrainian context and so we reviewed 84 academic articles to understand the nature of innovation in Ukraine, and this analysis revealed that political context has been very important for innovation in Ukrainian context and so we conceptualise this political context at three levels; international level, national level and local level. The practical implications of this is when it comes to rebuilding activity after the war, so basically Ukraine can benefit from this framework and so any innovator should consider this political context at three levels. Also from which country, let's say, is coming to innovation funding and at national level, what are the political priorities of existing governments? At local level, citizen empowerment is significant for innovation, crucial for innovation.

Dr Andrii Zharikov: We found out that performance of students actually increases, following the use of online interactive polling, following the introduction of these activities in their curriculum approximately by 5%. So, it's a very meaningful way to to increase student performance. So, that was our main finding. Our two other findings were about students and teachers perception of online interactive polling. Well, students absolutely loved it. There were very few responses which said that it didn't matter much for them, but the majority were absolutely positive about this experience.

Interviewer: What was the most challenging aspect of your work, and how did you cope with those challenges?

Dr Emre Cinar: So, of course, first of all, the war conditions was a challenge. Let's say, you’re having a meeting at 5p.m. with your colleagues in Odesa and the next morning reading the terrible news that Odesa was attacked in that night. So, it was quite challenging for me and so we coped by having weekly meetings to progress our project, but because of these conditions, we needed to be flexible. We were flexible and supported our colleagues in Odesa. Another challenge was that we were not able to collect primary data and we utilised secondary data sources. The strongest motivation for me and probably for my colleagues was one day, this war will end and so our findings will help in rebuilding Ukraine in the future.

Dr Andrii Zharikov: Gathering student responses after we will release the survey, because initially we factor in the number of students in the groups and we expected around 100 responses. Unfortunately, just a few days after we released this survey, a missile hit Odesa campus. Obviously, their attention was on the impact of that attack and how they can help their university to rebuild some of the facilities because some parts of their buildings were significantly damaged.

Dr Myropi Garri: In the next days, we had a meeting and they were able to participate at that meeting and send us photographs of all the destruction and the smashed windows and everything they were really dark months and still they were there and they were trying to pick up the damages and to rebuild everything as quickly as possible and to keep the university open.

Dr Andrii Zharikov: Obviously, we know we were working in a wartime environment, and even though we could factor this in when we were designing our project, this came out of nowhere -

Interviewer: It is an unknown situation and it's evolving fast. 

Dr Andrii Zharikov: Exactly, this was just two days after the release of the survey. So, I think the students were given one week to complete it and I think we quickly saw the activity dropping after the missile attack.

Professor Ashraf Labib: We got the clearances in terms of the procedures of the communication, how this could be done. Also, we were looking at the hypothetical case of this dam, which is the source that was particularly built to serve this nuclear power station. While we were running the project and investigating it, the dam was damaged. For me at least, this was something relatively new that all my research case studies and things that have happened, the dust has settled. When you are doing a root cause analysis and trying to look at the factors vulnerability, you need to have confidence in the factual evidence and the dust has settled, as we say. But here we really are, I think was a situation which is very dynamic.

Dr Olena Kovalova: In my view, working under of martial law conditions, constant shelling and blackouts is a challenge, has been operating and part of the team has successfully coped with this, as evidenced by the results of our project.

Dr Maksym Kunitsyn: Maybe the first challenge for us was ethics results, ethics recognition about our project. For the Portsmouth ethics commission was in the first place, and it was very strict for us. So, there was no rules of discrimination. It was very strict.

Interviewer: How was working with colleagues from Odesa different than working with other international colleagues you've worked with before?

Dr Myropi Garri: Working with people, with our colleagues in Odesa was really inspiring and an inspiring experience for me personally, and I think for all of us at the University of Portsmouth, mainly because of the fact that they try to keep the university open and they succeeded in that. They don't just try, they succeed, they are absolutely amazing. They doing absolutely wonderful work and they are very passionate about it. They are very determined to deliver the best possible result within these very unique and challenging circumstances that they are facing. And I really admire their courage and passion and dynamism.

Dr Aamir Amin: The country was going through a war and they were very much engaged with what we were doing. They were really serious about what we were doing. They wanted to sort of contribute. They wanted to give real suggestions and recommendations to the Ministry of Health, which would benefit their country, not only during the war, but afterwards as well. So, what I felt was I think it could be because of the context in which we were doing the research, because of the war going on and their feelings towards the war, they were losing loved ones and there were people related to them who were in the hospitals or they were seeking health care facilities.

Dr Jianan Lu: We are all so shocked and also impressed by our Odesa partners with their diligence and their resilience.

Dr Myropi Garri: They definitely inspired us, their willingness to stay where they are and keep the university open and keep doing what they are doing in their normal lives, at the very same moment when they were under attack. That was really inspiring. I had some of them telling me that; sorry, I haven’t replied because I spent all day in the bomb shelter. They just wanted to get a laptop with a battery that lasts more because of the power cuts.

Dr Andrii Zharikov: I'm Ukrainian so I feel how things are there in the country and how difficult it is but also, relating to colleagues who were part of this project who say: I cannot take part in this meeting today because we have no electricity or internet because of the recent missile attack, can we postpone it until later date? Or: the missile attack was at our campus and thankfully no one died, but still, that was an immediate risk. So emotionally, you feel more attached to those people than through the regular collaborations that you have with other international colleagues. For Odesa colleagues, it is an interesting experience working with us. For many of them, this was their first international collaboration. So, we sort of acted as guides of how we'll deal with day to day matters and yet we learned a lot from them in terms of their diligence, their motivation to carry out work under extreme circumstances, circumstances where they have immediate danger to their health and wellbeing. So, we learned from each other.

Interviewer: I think that is excellent work, thank you very much.

Jamie Arrowsmith: Sadly, we know that the war is not yet over. I'm sure we would all wish that this scheme had not been needed, but it was, and I am hugely grateful to the commitment and support and energy that everyone from the University of Portsmouth and Odesa National Polytechnic University have put into the programme to make such a lasting and fantastic and impactful collaboration. Together, you forged a partnership that offers true hope for the future. Thank you.