Recent research following mass shooting events has examined those individuals directly affected by the violence and the impact of the shooting on the whole community. This chapter reviews literature regarding the prevalence of adjustment difficulties among individuals in mass‐shooting‐ affected communities. Emerging research supports that a number of individuals with less severe or even no direct exposure to a mass shooting event may experience adjustment difficulties, including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and, further, that chronic adjustment difficulties can develop. The chapter discusses predictors of adjustment difficulties following mass shootings including the role of preshooting vulnerability, shooting‐related exposure and loss, and postshooting experiences. It considers the possibility that mass shooting events may represent opportunities for positive changes in individuals’ functioning. Finally, the chapter explores research regarding how the community itself may be altered by a mass shooting including changes in community solidarity, identity, and sense of safety within the community.

This dissertation examines civilian mobilization amidst the Donbas war in Ukraine and the identity formation processes that it engendered. It focuses on ordinary residents of the frontline regions who voluntarily got together to address the humanitarian and military consequences of war in the absence of state support. It explores the micro-level dynamics of mobilization, particularly the demographic profile of volunteers, their motivations to join and their pathways to engagement. In so doing, it provides an account of how ordinary residents of seemingly passive regions became active in times of crisis. I use the concept of “identity formation” to analyze how war and war engagement have impacted citizen, gender, national and language identities of those active at the rear. The outbreak of war shattered habitual ways of thinking and acting and brought about new modes of belonging and meaning making for war volunteers. My findings suggest that successful volunteer efforts in wartime allowed volunteers to position themselves differently with respect to community, nation, and the state and to articulate new understandings of “good citizenship.” The shifting positioning of volunteers, as the research demonstrates, is inherently linked to the changing citizen regimes in Ukraine and the gendered conceptions of who counts as a legitimate member of the community. By employing ethnographic tools of inquiry, the dissertation provides an ethnographic account of wartime social change “from below” and speaks to larger social and political transformations in wartime using Ukraine as a case study. It does so with attention to the social-political environment within which collective action occurs and in relation to the new types of mobility, socializing and bonding it engenders.

The thesis titled Legal aspects of constructing a deep geological repository od nuclear waste in the Czech Republic deals with the administrative procedures that needs to be taken before beginning construction of a deep geological repository. Work can be divided into three major parts. The first part deals with analysis of current legislation relating to nuclear energy, with emphasis on the treatment of nuclear waste. International and European commitments of the Czech Republic, current and new Atomic act, as well as institutional and financial arrangements for nuclear waste management are also included in this part. The following section has been devoted to the various administrative procedures. The goal of this section in not to provide complete description of the procedures, but to highlight points of interest and identify potential problems of current legislation and to propose better solution. The last major part is dedicated to public participation in the various administrative procedures. Emphasis is placed on the possibility of involvement of public and the affected communities in related administrative procedures. This chapter also contains a draft of the bill on community involvement in the process of selecting a site for deep repository.