Tatiana Surina

• Surina, Tatiana (2025). “Away from Students’ Emotional Life!”: Questioning DEMOCIT’s conclusion on controversial issues in classroom discussions. Speki. Nordisk pedagogisk-filosofisk tidsskrift. 2(2), p. 104–120. doi: 10.5617/speki.12304. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper questions the conclusions drawn by the DEMOCIT research group at Oslo Metropolitan University regarding the role of controversial issues in classroom discussions and their recommendation to prioritize an epistemic approach over an emotional one. Based on an analysis of data retrieved from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2022 (ICCS), DEMOCIT suggests minimizing emotional aspects in discussions to enhance equitable political self-efficacy among students, particularly for boys and minority-language adolescents, whose indicators are statistically lower. This paper argues that such conclusions may underestimate the importance of emotions in civic and citizenship education. Revisiting DEMOCIT’s line of reasoning indicates that it may not be the successful avoidance of emotional aspects in classroom discussions, but rather their—albeit implicit—embrace that account for the differences observed among less advantaged student groups. An analytical framework is introduced to assess the place of political emotions in classroom settings, categorizing emotions as avoided, implicitly embraced, or explicitly embraced, with the schools in DEMOCIT’s research aligning with the first two categories. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s theory of political emotions, this paper provides insights into why explicitly embracing emotions might be beneficial: a critical examination of emotions themselves may transform them to benefit democracy. The motivational potential of political emotions for democratic participation is also highlighted. While acknowledging valuable contributions of DEMOCIT’s study, this paper calls for further research into how the emotional components of classroom discussions impact students’ political self-efficacy. It also aims to initiate an investigation into how the concept of emotions is constructed within the Norwegian discourse of citizenship education.

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• Surina, Tatiana (2025). “I might love Russia much more than the regime supporters do.” Patriotism as value versus evaluation in the documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana (2025). “Away from students' emotional life!” Questioning DEMOCIT’s conclusion on controversial issues in classroom discussions. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana & SmåRådina, Styret i foreningen (2025). Andre verdenskrig blir brukt i russisk krigspropaganda i Europa. doi: https:/www.minerva.no/andre-verdenskrig-historie-krig/andre-verdenskrig-blir-brukt-i-russisk-krigspropaganda-i-europa/472518. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana (2024). Political emotions in the context of democratic education: Collective self-reflection. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana (2024). De fleste stemte mot Putin. doi: https:/www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/P4WGM6/de-fleste-stemte-mot-putin. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana (2023). Kaffe. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana (2022). Dehumanisation. Full text in Research Archive
• Surina, Tatiana (2023). Moved to action: The political mobilization of Russian oppositional-minded diaspora in Norway in response to the invasion of Ukraine 24.02.2022. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Since February 2022, the Russian anti-war diaspora in Norway has politically mobilized in response to the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine by the homeland. A phenomenological case study has been conducted in order to indicate manifestations of the mobilization and lived experiences associated with this phenomenon. Such lived experiences included both the political emotions and various aspects of the anti-war community identity relevant for the mobilization process. The political emotions, the identity contents, and the mobilization manifestations constituted, in their conjunction, the essence of the mobilization phenomenon. Afterwards, the collective affective intentionality (CAI) account of political emotions has been applied to the description of the phenomenon’s essence. Three methods of data collection have supplied the research with partly corroborating and partly complimentary data: qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews with four members of the Russian anti-war community, surveys, and qualitative content analysis of social media profiles of the NGO “SmåRådina: for democracy in Russia”, the center of the Russian anti-war protest in Norway. The analysis shows that the political mobilisation of the Russian anti-war diaspora has manifested itself in significant increase in topics, forms and directions of activities, as well as in growth in number of both registered and informal community members. Diasporants have experienced the phenomenon of political mobilization as a complex set of negatevely valenced emotions, the nature and intencity of which can hardly be conveyed by words. Resorting to metaphors, the respondents sketch the feelings of despair, lostness, dying, catastrophe, apocalypse, collapse of their entire world. The flip side of the political mobilization phenomenon is, however, the joy of collective action for a cause. Besides, various contents of identity, such as, relational (the relation to Ukrainians, to pro-regime Russians), collective (national, diasporic, political) and individual contents (patriotic, cosmopolitan) play into the process of mobilization. Russian diaspora political mobilization represents a dramatic intensification of the members’ political stance, feelings, and actions. Though the intensity of feelings fades in time, the diasporants continue to speak out and act. “Moved to action” in a more disassembled way would read as “emotionally moved to political action”.

• Tiril Andersen; Løvli, Benedikte Margit; Nygårdsvik, Brage & Surina, Tatiana (2022). Ny rapport om bruk av spillet Oslo 2084 i undervisning. Det Europeiske Wergelandsenteret. doi: https:/demokrativerksted.dev09.dekodes.no/2022/04/08/bruk-av-dataspillet-oslo-2084-i-undervisning/. Full text in Research Archive

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