‘Growing up in the world: parenting across cultures’ and ‘War, resilience and adjustment: understanding Ukrainian youth’ were the topics of lectures delivered by Dr Ann Skinner and Prof. Iuliia Pavlova on 6 November 2025 at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Opole.
Dr Ann Skinner represents the Duke University in the United States, and Prof. Iuliia Pavlova is affiliated to the Lviv State University of Physical Culture in Ukraine. Together with Prof. Aleksandra Rogowska from the Institute of Psychology, UO, they participate in the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Endowment Fund projects financed by the Duke University.
Under these projects, they came to Opole, where they have conducted research on the well-being of young adults and adolescents from Poland and Ukraine, including Ukrainians who have been displaced to Poland. Finishing their visit to the capital of the Opole region, they delivered two lectures to over 120 people, including students and academic teachers from the Institute of Psychology.
Dr Ann Skinner presented the research project ‘Growing up in the world: parenting across cultures’. She spoke about international research on parenting, child adjustment, adolescent risk-taking, well-being of young adults, and parent-child relationships. Dr Skinner presented the most important research results of the last 17 years, which she based on data collected from families in nine countries.
In her lecture ‘War, resilience and adjustment: understanding Ukrainian youth’, Prof. Iuliia Pavlova talked about the results of her research on psychological and physiological mechanisms of resilience among young Ukrainians who have experienced war and displacement. In her research, she was focused on life satisfaction, hope, optimism, stress coping strategies, PTSD symptoms and markers of chronic stress.