A journey from childhood to research for change

Davit Totadze

We are all products of our past. Every event, every gained experience, positive and negative, has left its mark, shaping us into who we are today (although I am not arguing that our personality is influenced only by external factors, while internal ones, such as genetics, are absent).

Some say that our current reality, our lives, are the result of our life decisions and choices made in the past. But how did we end up in these situations in the first place?

I would say the answer lies in our childhood. The period when we are a blank slate and our personality and character begin to take shape. But before we delve into that, let’s take a step back and read my story.

From Childhood Hardships to Resilience

It seems that being born in the late 1980s in post-Soviet Georgia, in difficult socio-economic and political conditions, is in itself enough to call your childhood traumatic. Still, life had more surprises in store for me.

I became internally displaced at the age of seven. My family fled Russian-occupied Abkhazia and moved to the capital city of Tbilisi. The cherry on top was the way our fellow Georgians treated us, calling us refugees.

Then came the teenage years. Believe me, being a teenager in a strongly masculine culture is painful. Mostly, everyone sees the physical pain, because the vast majority of conflicts are physical, but few people pay attention to how broken we are mentally.

Here, I am not referring to depression, which has become even the norm nowadays. The damage I am concerned about is far more dangerous for us and those around us. Ultimately, perhaps it is precisely because of all this that we Georgians are still struggling to build a democratic state.

Fortunately, I found a way out of all the difficulties I faced. Thanks to my parents, who never gave up on me, even when I was difficult to handle, and the genetics they passed to me.

People close to me used to tease me, calling me a professor because I knew “everything”. But what about all those young boys who were not as lucky as I?

Civic Engagement and the Road to Academia

For as long as I can remember, I have always been civically active. In February 2018, I co-founded the Human Rights Research Center (HRRC), a non-governmental organisation that works with disadvantaged, marginalised and vulnerable young people.

Over time, I became aware that reality is much more severe than it appears on paper. It was difficult to accept that there was nothing I could do about it due to Georgia’s political instability. So, I moved on and found refuge in academia.

Since January 2025, I have been a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme on Inequalities, Interventions, and New Welfare State (DPInvest) at the University of Turku, pursuing my studies in Sociology.

Generally, I am interested in voting behaviour. Thus, my doctoral dissertation is focused on electoral clientelism in the Visegrad Group.

We can only build a more just and fair society if we tackle childhood traumas at their root.

Research Questions and the Path Toward Societal Change

Recently, I participated in the Bridging Science, Policy, and Society: The ABCs of Research Communication course, organised at the university. It was quite productive and led me to a couple of research questions:

a) how is school-age victimisation associated with voting behaviour in adulthood, and
b) what political taste might it foster?

If I receive the necessary financial support, I plan to explore this topic using Finnish register data. I believe that addressing school-age victimisation today is crucial to improving electoral participation in adulthood.

Overall, youth turnout is critically low. Furthermore, working with the pupils now can contribute to the development of more pro-democratic political views in adulthood. Both my personal and professional experiences have led me to the conviction that we can only build a more just and fair society if we tackle childhood traumas at their root.

In summary, INVEST and the University of Turku can equip me with all the tools I need to study the matter and contribute to the field, ultimately benefiting a better society.

Author

Davit Totadze is a researcher navigating in the web of choice theories, exploring the complexity of what appears to be simple voting behaviour.“