Professor stranded in Dubai keeps calm and carries on for her students
University of Bradford Professor of Marketing Eva Kipnis was unexpectedly stranded in Dubai while teaching on the Executive MBA as regional tensions escalated. Despite missile alerts, cancelled flights and repeated sheltering in her hotel’s underground car park, she continued supporting students by moving teaching online. Here she talks candidly about her experience.
Despite the recent military build-up in the Middle East, when Professor of Marketing Eva Kipnis flew out to Dubai last Wednesday to teach on the University of Bradford’s Executive MBA, she expected a familiar routine. She has been travelling to the University’s long‑established Dubai Hub for four years, teaching Marketing, Branding and Strategy to senior professionals from across the region.
But within 48 hours of her arrival, as tensions escalated into open conflict, she found herself stranded in a high‑rise hotel, living through missile alerts, cancelled flights, and long nights sheltering in the underground car park.
“It’s not the most impacted part of the city,” says the professor, who is also Director of the University’s Doctoral College. “But when they issue a Dubai‑wide alert, you move. You listen.” When the first alarms went off, her phone lit up with a government warning – “it reaches even foreign mobile phones,” she notes – and she made the now‑familiar descent: 20 floors on foot, down concrete stairwells, because lifts are considered unsafe during missile threats.
“I’ve got a little ‘go‑bag’ now,” she says. “A mat for the stairs, some nuts and chocolate, water. You just prepare.”
She has sheltered multiple times, sometimes until 2am. “Of course there is anxiety,” she says, “I worry about my family. My parents, my husband, my children. And I know they’re incredibly worried about me.”
What makes the experience even more vivid is her history. “My brother and his family were in Kyiv when Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” she explains. “I helped bring them to the UK on the Ukraine family visa. It feels like we’ve swapped places.”
Teaching through the chaos
Yet amid the tension and the surreal contrast – with some guests still sunbathing by the hotel pool – Eva’s instinct was simple: look after her students.
She had been teaching in person on Saturday when several students began receiving messages from their employers. Flights were suspended. Organisations told staff to return home.
“We paused the class and everyone left,” she says. “I went back to my hotel. But I knew I still needed to teach. We moved everything online.”
On Sunday, despite the uncertainty, anxiety and disrupted sleep, her entire teaching day went ahead on Microsoft Teams.
“I’m amazed by the resilience of our students,” she says. “Those who could join came online and stayed all day. It felt surreal to talk about brands and marketing... but at the same time it was topical. We spoke about the ‘British brand’ of keep calm and carry on. It helped create a sense of normality.”
Her admiration extends to her colleagues at the Dubai Hub, who are living through the same conditions. “We check in on each other,” she says. “And I appreciate the colleagues in Bradford who have reached out. It really matters.”
Eva was meant to fly home on Monday. Her flight was cancelled.
Her story was also covered by Times Higher Education Supplement and The Guardian.
“As far as I understand, Emirates have resumed limited operations, but there’s a backlog. People who were meant to fly on Saturday and Sunday are ahead of me. There is no clarity yet.”
She is trying not to dwell on it. “Panicking doesn’t help. You need a cool head to be effective in situations like this.”
An academic finding herself inside her own research
Strikingly, some of Eva’s own academic work speaks directly to what she is experiencing.
Only months ago she published research in The Conversation – Keep calm and carry on buying: how Ukrainian consumers are hitting back at Russia – about how brands and marketing can act as social support mechanisms in wartime – research based on fieldwork in Ukraine. “I’ve found myself becoming a subject of it now,” she says.
Her work explores how advertising and services of brands, even simple commercial routines, help civilians maintain a sense of identity, unity and normalcy during crises.
“Marketing is often misunderstood as just selling things,” she says. “But brands have huge audiences and many communication channels. They have the capability to create meaningful messaging, to remind people they’re not alone.”
In Ukraine, she notes, local brands played a vital community role – from satirical chocolate figurines offering dark humour, to cafes buying generators and staying open so people could stay warm or charge phones during blackouts. “These are day‑to‑day products and services enabled by marketing functions. They help maintain normalcy. It’s part of resilience.”
She sees echoes of that now in Dubai. “Just being able to get a coffee, or go to a shop that’s open, supports your sense of routine. It matters.”
Eva Kipnis teaches on University of Bradford’s Executive MBA, which is taught in Dubai and on its Distance Learning MBA and is currently sheltered in a hotel in Dubai. A spokesperson from the University said it was extending support to all affected students, including doctoral research students.