Qianrui Hu is a PhD student at School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. His academic interests mainly include sociology of border, war, migration, ethnicity. Having started his PhD in 2021 before Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine, he initially planned his fieldtrip to Donbas to write about the everyday social dynamics happening in the background of the war there. Since the outbreak of the big war, he focuses on people’s reinterpretations of their war experience between 2014 and 2022 in Donbas in relation to the full-scale war. Besides his academic work, he has also volunteered for organisations aiming at refugee relief, such as KHARPP and Ukrainian House in Warsaw.