Far from home, Ukrainian scholar works to keep her language alive

More than 8,000 kilometres away from her family home in Crimea, linguist Alina Dochu often finds herself thinking about her grandmother’s quşaq, a highly ornamental traditional belt that is typically handed down through generations among the Crimean Tatar people.

It represents not only everything she left behind after fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year, but the important cultural legacy that she has carried with her to McMaster as a Crimean Tatar.

Here, Dochu has found a safe haven as a postdoctoral fellow, working to preserve her language and her culture from afar — thanks to efforts by McMaster’s Centre for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL) to bring her and other displaced Ukrainian scholars to Canada.

Read more at Daily News.