KoDaNetOst
Collaborative Data Network with Eastern Europe
(c) ZOiS 2025
Project description
KoDaNetOst is a data network whose aim is to foster links between research institutes and scholars in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, Central Asia and the EU countries who are engaged in the collection and utilisation of data in the social sciences and humanities. Good baseline data are indispensable for academic cooperation, knowledge generation, and research communication aimed at policy-makers, multipliers, journalists and an interested public. However, access to data in the form of interviews, surveys or archival material is increasingly fraught with obstacles: authoritarian structures, corruption and, not least, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine are impeding not only data-gathering in the field but also exchange of expertise among scholars and research institutes. Differences in legal frameworks and research cultures pose further challenges.
KoDaNetOst therefore serves as a platform for a diverse range of stakeholders who are conducting research in, with and on Eastern Europe. Through networking and knowledge-sharing, the aim is to facilitate cooperation at eye level and improve access to data and expertise across the Eastern European and EU countries. Issues around research ethics, methodology and techniques and the law relating to data gathering, storage and use are foregrounded here. In the research sphere, the focus is on topics such as democratic consolidation, economic development, climate policy and sustainability, human-environment relations, conflict dynamics and protest movements, (national) minorities, and cultural, religious and ethnic diversity.
KoDaNetOst is funded by the BMBF.
Objectives
- To improve the availability of and access to data
- To discuss standards and methodogy
- To simplify knowledge-sharing among scholars and research institutions
- To visualize research data from/ about Eastern Europe as the KonKoop DataLab already does for protest event datasets and for conflict and cooperation datasets
Workshop
On 25 & 26 March 2025, the KoDaNetOst-network met at ZOiS in Berlin to disuss its structure, scope and activities.
Project team
Benjamin Beuerle is a researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch Berlin (CMB). He studied history, philosophy and public law in Berlin, Tübingen and Aix-en-Provence before doing his PhD in Eastern European History at Humboldt-University Berlin. He joined the Franco-German research institute CMB in March 2022 after five years at the German Historical Institute in Moscow, where he had been scientific coordinator for an interdisciplinary collaborative project on Russia in the Asia-Pacific. Since autumn 2022 he is co-responsible for CMB’s then-created “Environment, Climate, Energy” research focus.
Kerstin Bischl is a historian and the academic coordinator of KonKoop at the Centre for East European and International Studies since 2022. She brings a cultural and global history perspective to her work, since her PhD at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin was on gender relations and the dynamics of violence in the everyday life of the Red Army from 1941 to 1945. She was subsequently a research associate at the University of Göttingen, where she worked on a research project on Soviet Jews in ‘late socialism’, established cooperations with universities and civil society partners in Russia, Georgia and Belarus, and coordinated the research network “Ambivalences of the Soviet, 1953-2023”.
Ivaylo Dinev is a political scientist and, since April 2022, a postdoctoral researcher at ZOiS, where he coordinates theMulti-Method Data Laboratory of KonKoop. He holds a doctoral degree in Political Science from the joint doctoral initiative of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, University of Siena, University of Pisa and University of Florence. Prior to that, he completed BA and MA at Sofia University in Southeast European Studies and Cultural Anthropology. Before joining ZOiS, Ivaylo Dinev worked as a researcher at the Institute for Social and Trade Union Research in the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria and as a postdoctoral researcher at Sofia University.
Sabine von Löwis is a senior researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) and one of the PI of KonKoop. She sudied Economic and Social Geography at the Technical University of Dresden, gained a doctorate at HafenCity University in Hamburg and habilitated at the University of Leipzig. From 2011 to 2017, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch, where she was involved in the joint research project Phantom borders in East Central Europe. At ZOiS she coordinates the research cluster Conflict Dynamics and Border Regions.
Felix Schulte is a Senior Researcher and head of the cluster “Conflict & Security” at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI). He studied political science, sociology, and history in Eichstätt, Linköping and Heidelberg. Previously he held research positions at Heidelberg University and Mannheim University. Felix was a guest researcher at the Åland Islands Peace Institute (Finland) and the Institute for Minority Rights at EURAC Bolzano (Italy). At ECMI, he is PI of the DFG-funded project “Sparking Events, Emotional Climates, and Cascades of Cultural Identity Conflicts”, and he is a member of the editorial board of the journal Democratization.
