Thesis Work at Oxford: Dissertation Grant Report from Anna Žabicka

On September 1, 2023, I started my 3-month visiting academic position at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) in Oxford, UK. With a generous grant of the AABS, I was able to cover the visiting academic fee of 960 pounds sterling. I successfully completed my academic stay at COMPAS on November 30, 2023.

At COMPAS I was concentrating on polishing already existing chapter drafts, as well as I started developing new chapters. Early in my stay, I met with Assoc. Prof. Dace Dzenovska to talk through my already more or less developed chapter drafts. Given her expertise in the anthropology of migrations and the concept of emptiness in post-socialist states, Prof. Dzenovska’s feedback on my chapters was crucial. Her extensive fieldwork in rural Latvia, although in a different region from mine, provided a valuable perspective. Our discussions explored shared observations on contemporary Latvia, focusing on social policies, public and political discourses around rural development, the so-called moral panic over declining birth rates, and out-migration. These insights prompted me to restructure the chapters, enhancing their depiction of the layered vulnerabilities and perceptions of rural areas.

As a result, last September I had once again divided the existing chapters and reorganized their sequence. Restructuring my thesis once more paved the way to its final “red–thread” argument and helped to emphasize the relationship between the nursing home (that cares for older adults, adults with mental disorders, nursing staff, and the rural community as such) and the political discourse that keeps emphasizing the necessity to increase birth rates (that keep decreasing): while the social policies created by politicians keep relying on imagined growth of the nation, the nursing home is the place that has accepted the reality of older adults being the future. Furthermore, during my stay at COMPAS, I developed initial drafts for Chapters 5 and 6, which delve into the “invisible” lives of older adults, and Chapter 7, which examines temporal experiences in the nursing home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During my stay, I joined weekly reading groups with Prof. Dzenovska and colleagues from the “Emptiness” project. We engaged in detailed discussions on each other’s ongoing work, which proved highly valuable as every project was connected to themes of emptiness. Additionally, all COMPAS colleagues specialize in post- socialist states, enriching our discussions and helping me refine my thesis arguments. On November 1st, my colleagues reviewed and critiqued my updated chapters and outline. I received insightful feedback from Prof. Dzenovska, Prof. Anastasiya Ryabchuk, and post-doctoral researchers Dr. Volodymyr Artiukh and Dr. Dominic Martin. Furthermore, I attended COMPAS’s “Work in Progress” meetings every Thursday and lectures at the School of Anthropology every Friday, further deepening my understanding and integration into the academic community.

The second half of the ABBS Dissertation Grant for Graduate Students has funded the English language editing of four (all ethnographic) of the seven chapters of my thesis. I collaborated again with Daniel Flaumenhaft, an experienced editor who also works with my academic advisor. Throughout my thesis development, with encouragements of my advisor and other professors I have worked with, including Prof. Dzenovska, I have been envisioning it as a potential book (monography), so it was crucial to work with a skilled English language editor who is attuned to the nuances of non-native speakers’ influence on English. I aim to save enough money by the end of the year to fund the editing of the remaining three chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, which are currently being revised by my advisor.

Thanks to AABS’s support, I am closer to completing a high-quality dissertation that I plan to defend in late 2025 (fingers crossed!).