In war zones, education itself becomes a frontline. Knowledge holders – teachers, researchers, academics – are often regarded as smart, resourceful people whose independence and insight can threaten occupying powers.
Historically, they have been watched, targeted, or displaced because their expertise equips them to anticipate next moves, survive strategically, and protect knowledge. Yet the story of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University shows how, even under such conditions, the academic spirit endures and even thrives.
During the early weeks of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, one of the university’s leaders, Yana Sychikova, moved between basements and temporary shelters as Russian forces consolidated control of the city.
Classes, meetings and semesters collapsed entirely; survival – access to food, electricity, information and safety – became the urgent concern. In those days, Yana realised that a university is not defined by buildings or schedules, but by relationships: staff checking in on one another, students sending messages when connectivity allowed, and the conviction that education could continue only if care and human connection came first.
Alongside Yana, Igor Lyman has been instrumental in steering the university through this extreme disruption.
Together, they have coordinated distributed teaching, safeguarded staff and students, and maintained continuity of research, showing that leadership under war is not only about survival but about sustaining purpose, creativity and intellectual productivity.
Over the past three years, despite displacement from their original buildings, they and their teams have produced research at the same, or even greater, level than when operating from the campus.
Their work exemplifies how knowledge holders leverage their expertise and foresight to navigate conflict while continuing to educate, investigate and innovate.
Living the borderlands of education
This experience reflects what I have explored in my research: borders are not simply geographic lines, they are lived, relational and ethical spaces where identity, agency and resilience are constantly negotiated.
The idea of a ‘University without walls” has always carried a profound resonance for me: less as metaphor, and more as lived memory. I recall stories from my parents and their friends from Prague, who were not allowed to study at the University during communism in Central Europe and thus they gathered in secret apartments, private gardens, and parish halls for self-organised ‘underground university’ seminars.
These clandestine gatherings offered more than philosophical education; they embodied courage, solidarity, and the refusal to allow institutional borders or authoritarian systems to dictate what counts as knowledge, and who can speak it.
Reimagining a university without walls, then, is not merely about dissolving physical boundaries; it is about reclaiming the university as an ethical and intellectual commons, as a space where curiosity, dissent, and care can thrive.
In Ukraine, similarly, the war transformed the campus into a borderland, where traditional markers of academic life vanished, and meaning was created in the interactions, care and trust between people.
When physical classrooms and laboratories became inaccessible, Yana, Igor and their colleagues reimagined teaching and learning as distributed, responsive and relational.
“This approach allowed us to transform the limitations and challenges caused by the hostile occupation of the university campus into new opportunities that we had not even thought about before,” Igor Lyman emphasises.
Classes became asynchronous when necessary; timetables were rebuilt around students’ lives, not institutional routines; assessments were designed to support wellbeing as much as academic rigour. Education was redesigned so that people came before processes.
“For professors and students, our university has become, without exaggeration, a big family, and at the same time a virtual space of stability, a symbol of an inextricable connection with our hometown,” Professor Lyman says.
Here, the university itself became relational rather than physical. The trust, solidarity and collective creativity among staff and students were the walls that endured. In a sense, the university became a living borderland where connection mattered more than bricks and mortar.
Wellbeing at the centre
Too often, in stable contexts, wellbeing is treated as a program, a checkbox of services or awareness weeks. What I have learned from Yana, Igor and their colleagues is that wellbeing and care can become the core organising principle of an educational institution, not an add-on. And it can support and be a cornerstone of a resilient University.
In Ukraine, mental health shifted from taboo to operational priority simply because nothing else could function without it.
“At our university, we deliberately prioritised research on the impact of war on higher education, with mental health as a central focus. Across three waves of surveys, we observed a dramatic growth in academic burnout, strongly correlated with lecturers’ intentions to leave the profession,” Professor Sychikova explains.
It informed pedagogy, timetabling, assessment and community care in ways many of us rarely must consider.
“These findings made it clear that individual coping strategies were not enough,” said Prof. Sychikova. “We began to treat care as institutional work, embedding mutual support into everyday academic life rather than outsourcing wellbeing to isolated services.”
These challenges assumptions held in Australian universities, where we invest heavily, both financially and symbolically, in campuses as assets of identity and prestige. When wellbeing is not central, these investments can unintentionally prioritise place over people.
“One practical response was the creation of the online café ‘I Am Here’ – a virtual space where simple rituals of presence and mutual recognition emerged. In conditions of displacement and uncertainty, these shared routines became anchors of psychological stability,” said Prof. Sychikova.
A provocative, but necessary question emerges: what aspects of a university’s identity truly require physical space, and which can be nurtured wherever people are? The Ukrainian experience invites us to imagine caring, connected educational spaces that do not rely solely on infrastructure.
Lessons for Australian educators
Australia is not a war zone. But we face significant pressures: hybrid teaching fatigue, growing student mental health needs, and the emotional labour of academic work itself. In such contexts, it is easy to relegate wellbeing to support services while core teaching practices remain unchanged.
The Ukrainian model teaches a deeper lesson: education flourishes when organised not only around tradition, but also around human need. This doesn’t mean abandoning campuses. It means rethinking them not only as places of knowledge and education, but as hubs of care and experience. It means asking how physical and digital spaces can foster connection and innovation, and how universities can be genuine communities of learning, belonging and resilience.
Prof. Sychikova explained that the war also taught an unexpected lesson about data stewardship.
“When institutions can lose buildings, servers and archives overnight, the ethical responsibility to preserve research data becomes inseparable from academic resilience itself.”
Looking forward together
On 26 February, Yana Sychikova and Igor Lyman will join us in Melbourne for a Faculty of Education × Future Campus event. They will share their stories, speaking not only of endurance but of transformation of what it means to teach, learn, lead and care when the familiar contours of academic life are uprooted.
Their experience reminds me why we are educators: not to guard walls, but to open spaces of possibilities. Education is a lived space where identity, agency and connection are constantly negotiated. In their work, I see a version of education that is radically humane, connected, compassionate and attentive to the lived realities of students and staff alike.
And that is a lesson worth listening to.
Professor Marek Tesar is Dean of the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Education.