I am the Principal Investigator of CareOrg and I work at the Institute of Sociology and the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Gender (CGC) of Goethe University Frankfurt. Originally from Poland, I studied at the Universities of Wroclaw and Bochum, where I obtained a PhD in Social Sciences; the topic of my thesis was the role of Upper Silesia for transnational migration. From there, my interest shifted to the connection between migration and gender, specializing in questions of ageing and transnational families, welfare/policy analysis and intersectionality. Care in particular has always been central for my work at academia and beyond: CareOrg ties in with the research done for the project “Decent Care Work” (2017–2021) (https://decent-care-work.net/), a three-country study on international placement agencies in senior care and the transnationalization of labor markets. An earlier international project completed in 2010 on global care chains from Ukraine to Poland and from Poland to Germany investigated the change in care arrangements and gender relations and the redistribution of care work in the context of female migration. In a pioneering explorative study on “New Butlers” (2011–2012), I investigated paid domestic services from the perspective of masculinity studies.

Outside academia, I collected experience working with vulnerable groups as a volunteer for a Polish association caring for mentally disabled people (1995–1998), as a personal assistant for senior, mentally, and physically disabled people in Münster and Dortmund, Germany (1999–2007), and as a volunteer in migration services at Caritas Association in Bochum (2004/2005).

I have extensive experience in teaching and organizing and leading international projects, programmes and networks promoting junior researchers (at CGC, Grade Centre at GU). I actively contribute to the transfer of knowledge between academia and practical work through regular publications in media, cooperation with stakeholders and policy makers.

I work as a research assistant within the CareOrg project and have been conducting research on migrant care work since my master's thesis in Cultural Anthropology. There, I have explored the digitalization of care migration by investigating the medial practices of Polish migrant care workers in Germany ethnographically and empirically with the help of qualitative, narrative interviews and participant observations. My sensitization for topics that address social inequality and migration issues can certainly be explained by my biography. My parents come from Poland, I grew up bilingual, and I completed my bachelor's degree in Slavic Studies with a focus on Polish Studies and a minor in cultural anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. After my studies I worked as a research assistant in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Mainz before I joined the CareOrg team as PhD candidate.

Since 2024, I have been working as a student assistant for the CareOrg project at Goethe University, where I am currently pursuing my master degree in Sociology. Prior to this, I completed my bachelor studies in Political Science and Sociology at the University of Tübingen in 2023. My main areas of interest and research thus far include migration and gender studies as well as empirical analysis of political movements.

I was born and grew up in Ukraine but in the last 20 years have been moving around Europe pursuing my professional interest – research in gendered migration flows, distant motherhood and transnational youth, overlaps of gendered care, mobility and labor regimes and moral economy of migration. I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Central European University in Budapest and my thesis focused on the experience of life and work in migration by Ukrainian care and domestic workers to Italy. Since 2012, I have turned to film as a media for both research and outreach, and a way to grasp humor and contradictions of migration stories. My both earlier films are not about migration per se but about people who have embarked on complicated life journeys, both emotionally and geographically. Since 2017 I have turned to exploring transnational labor sourcing agencies and action research in the area of migrant workers’ rights. Alongside, my interests lie in research methodologies; qualitative methods in migration studies, visual methods and action research. Currently, I am a MSCA IF fellow in a project „RightsLab: Towards Transnational Labour Rights? Temporary Work Agencies and Third Country National Workers in the EU” (2021–2024) at the University of Padua. Within the CareOrg project I will be responsible for the production of a documentary film and its dissemination at film festivals and teaching events, as well as for the production of infographics and podcasts.

Website: https://www.slang-unipd.it/soggetti/olena-fedyuk/

Filmography:
Road of a migrant (2015)
Olha’s Italian Diary (2021)
Funeralzzi (in production)

I work as a pre-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of A Coruña. I graduated in Social Work at the University of Santiago de Compostela (2018) and studied the Master in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid (2020). In 2022, I was granted with a pre-doctoral scholarship from the Galician Government (Xunta de Galicia), which allows me to develop my doctoral thesis about domestic and care workers' cooperatives. In recent years, I have also worked as a social worker and social intervention technician in the field of migration and rural development. In line with this, my research interests have focused mainly on gender, migration and care. I am currently a member of the ESOMI research team.

I work as a student assistant for the CareOrg project at Frankfurt’s Goethe-University. In 2021 I received my bachelor’s degree in Political and Social Studies as well as English and American Studies at the University of Würzburg. My main areas of interest and research include cultural economy, political sociology, and social imaginaries as well as antisemitism.