Crimean Tatars: 80 Years of Remembrance and Resistance

Alim Aliev is Deputy Director General of the Ukrainian Institute (Kyiv), a human rights defender, curator of educational and cultural projects, researcher, and journalist. He is a board member of PEN Ukraine, as well as co-founder of the 'Crimea SOS' NGO, and co-author of Mustafa Dzhemilev. Unbreakable, a book about the leader of the Crimean Tatars. Aliev is a member of the supervisory boards of several Ukrainian NGO, and the initiator of the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar literary project 'Crimean Fig'. He is also a frequent participant and speaker in Crimean advocacy missions in the Council of Europe, European Parliament, OSCE, UN Security Council, and other political institutions.

Rory Finnin is Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He launched Cambridge Ukrainian Studies in 2008. He is former Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies (2014-18) and former Chair of the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES) (2011-18). Finnin's primary research interest is the interplay of culture and identity in Ukraine. He also focuses on the history of colonialism in Crimea and studies Crimean Tatar literature and culture. His broader research interests include nationalism studies, solidarity studies, and cultural memory in the region of the Black Sea. His new book, Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (University of Toronto Press, 2022), has won eight international book awards, earning distinctions in the fields of Ukrainian Studies, European Studies, Slavic Studies, nationalism studies, and genocide studies. Finnin is a trustee of the Ukrainian Institute London.

Elmira Muratova, is a post-doctoral researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Germany. She was previously employed at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark and the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Taurida National University in Ukraine. Elmira has served as a Research Fellow at the University of Kansas, University College London, Humboldt University, and Charles University. From 2009 to 2014, she provided policy analysis and consultations to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. Elmira earned her PhD in Political Science from Taurida National University in 2005, where she researched Islamic revival in post-Soviet Crimea. She is the author and editor of several books and has contributed over sixty research articles and book chapters in the areas of Crimean Tatars’ identity and religion, as well as ethnic and religious developments in Crimea. Her most recent (co-authored) book, Crimean Tatars under the Changes in Political Arena, was published in 2020.

Emine Ziyatdinova is a Crimean Tatar documentary photographer and co-founder and director of the NGO 'Ukrainian Warchive', a digital photo archive of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Born in Uzbekistan, her family was deported from Crimea in 1944 by the Stalin regime. Growing up as part of the Crimean Tatar minority in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she gained a firsthand understanding of the human rights issues faced by ethnic minorities and the challenges stemming from the economic and political transition in her country. Her unique perspective places her at the intersection of documentary photography, sociology, human rights, and journalism. Ziyatdinova holds MA degrees in Sociology from Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and in photojournalism from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication. From 2012 to 2017, she worked extensively in documentary photography and journalism in Ukraine before relocating to the UK. There, she has contributed her expertise to the non-profit sector, working with organisations such as the Rory Peck Trust and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Ziyatdinova's work was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship and a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund Fellowship. Her photography projects have been showcased in exhibitions both in Ukraine and internationally.