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2024 - 2025 Fellows of the Petrach Program on Ukraine
Resident Fellows
Nadiia Bureiko is ‘Ukraine Abroad’ Programme Director at Foreign Policy Council ‘Ukrainian Prism’, network-based non-governmental research centre (Kyiv) and vice-head of research NGO ‘Quadrivium’ (Chernivtsi). She has completed her post-doctoral research at the University of St. Gallen as holder of the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship and research fellowship at the New Europe College as holder of the Pontica Magna Scholarship. Prior to this, Dr. Bureiko obtained her MA in International Relations and PhD in Political Science at Yurii Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine, where she also worked as an assistant at the Department of International Relations. Dr. Bureiko is the author of academic articles in important peer-reviewed journals (Europe-Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Eastern Journal of European Studies etc.) and chapters for the edited books published in Routledge and Manchester University Press. Her research interests include perceptions of country status and image, Ukraine’s foreign policy and national identity. She has been working as a coordinator and researcher in the international projects funded by the European Commission, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, the Research Council of Norway, the International Visegrad Fund, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, and USAID.
Oleksandr Fisun is a professor of political science and the department head at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine (B.A. with Highest Honors in Political Economy, 1987; C.Sc. in Philosophical Sciences, 1990; D.Sc. habil in Political Science, 2009). His research interests concentrate on Ukrainian and post-Soviet politics. During the past ten years, he has held visiting fellowships at the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, & Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington (Seattle); the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta (Edmonton); the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki; the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam); the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto; the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Warsaw), and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. His publications include “Democracy, Neopatrimonialism, and Global Transformations” (Kharkiv, 2006) and numerous book chapters and articles on comparative democratization, informal politics, neopatrimonialism, and regime change in Ukraine and post-Soviet Eurasia. He serves as President of the “Observatory of Democracy” policy research center in Kharkiv, which he founded in 2016 with a group of political experts to improve democratic accountability, civic activism, free and fair elections, and citizen awareness in eastern frontline Ukrainian regions. During his fellowship, Dr. Oleksandr Fisun will work on his research project, “The Puzzle of Ukrainian Democracy: Presidents, Oligarchs and Informal Politics after the Euromaidan Revolution.”
Uliana Movchan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. She has conducted research on Ukrainian politics at the University of California, San Diego (2012-2013), Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (2017), Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at University of Toronto (2019), Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University (2021-2022), University of Tübingen (2022), and Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (2022-2023). She has also been a project manager and expert on projects funded by international foundations such as the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the International Visegrad Fund.
Mykola Riabchuk is a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies in Kyiv and, currently, a lecturer at the University of Warsaw. He penned several books and many articles on civil society, state/nation building, nationalism, national identity, and postcommunist transition in Eastern Europe, particularly in Ukraine. In 2014-2018, he headed the Ukrainian PEN Center and was the program director of the 83rd Congress of PEN International in 2017. His work was distinguished with several national and international awards, including Bene merito medal of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs for his contribution into Polish-Ukrainian mutual understanding (2009), and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize in Arts in Literature for the collection of essays Nationalist’s Lexicon (2022, Polish translation 2023). His latest books (in English) are Eastern Europe since 1989: Between the Loosened Authoritarianism and Unconsolidated Democracy (Warsaw, 2020), and At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden. Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization (Stuttgart, 2021).
Pavlo Smytsnyuk is a Ukrainian scholar of religion. He specializes in political theology, modern Greek and Slavic Orthodoxy, religious nationalism and peacebuilding. From 2022-2024 Pavlo was a Seeger O’Boyle Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University. Prior to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Pavlo served as the Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies and a Senior Lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. Pavlo has published on issues such as comparative theology, ecumenical dialogue, as well as religious approaches to tolerance, war, and the ecological crisis. Since 2021, he has been a member of the State Department’s Advisory Council of Religions and Ethnicities of Ukraine, and has led a number of international projects. Pavlo studied philosophy and theology in Rome, Athens and St Petersburg and holds a Doctorate from the University Oxford.
Non-Resident Fellows
Yuliya Bidenko is an Associate Professor and a Curator for the Master’s Program at Karazin Kharkiv National University, Political Science Department. For the spring semester of 2024 she is affiliated with the SCRIPTS Excellence Cluster at the Free University of Berlin as a Senior Visitor Research Fellow, and during 2023 was a Visiting U-NET Fellow at the Centre for Eastern European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin. In 2022 she joined the National Platform for Resilience and Reconciliation as a regional coordinator in eastern Ukraine and co-established the Ukrainian-based NGO “Association of Civic Educators” supported by the International Foundation for the Election Systems (IFES). In 2021-2022 Dr. Bidenko was an expert and the author of the Ukrainian annual country report for the “Nations in Transit” by the Freedom House. Since 2016 Dr. Bidenko has been the expert for the “Team Europe” Initiative by the European Union’s Delegation to Ukraine. She has published academic articles and papers devoted to Ukrainian resilience, decentralization, civil society, and the political regime changes in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
Borys Kormych is a professor of law and the department head at the National University Odesa Law Academy in Ukraine. He obtained his LLM in 1999, PhD in Law in 2000, and Dr. Sc. in Law in 2005. His research focuses on Black Sea Security, International Trade, the Ukrainian political system, and public administration. He is a member of the Public Council at the State Customs Service of Ukraine and an arbitrator at the Ukrainian Maritime Arbitration Commission. Additionally, he serves as the editor-in-chief of Lex Portus journal. In the past year, he held a non-residence fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His previous roles also included participation in several research projects funded by ERASMUS and the Council of Europe. His published works include several books on Ukraine’s trade and customs policy, information, and political security. His most recent papers focus on the Russo-Ukrainian armed conflict in the Black Sea, Ukrainian grain exports, Russian policies toward occupied Ukrainian territories, and legal aspects of gray zone conflicts.
Natalia Kudriavtseva is currently Professor of Translation and Slavic Studies at Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. She received her MA in Second Language Pedagogy from Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University, Ukraine (2003), and her PhD in Social Theory from Hryhorii Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, National Academy of Sciences, in Kyiv (2008). She completed her habilitation thesis in Linguistics and Translation Studies, and was awarded the Doctor of Science degree by Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University (2018). Her research focuses on language policies, identities and grassroots language activism. Her recent work explores language practices in wartime Ukraine as well as the transition to Ukrainian among Ukraine’s speakers of Russian. Dr. Kudriavtseva has published internationally and written for the US Kennan Institute’s Focus Ukraine blog, Canadian Forum for Ukrainian Studies and Germany-based Ukraine-Analysen and Ukrainian Analytical Digest.
Yurii Latysh is Visiting Professor of State University of Londrina, Brazil. He received his PhD in History from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Dr. Latysh founded and headed the academic and professional program “Applied (Public) History” of the Bachelor’s degree program of the Faculty of History at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv from 2019 to 2023. He is also the Deputy editor-in-chief of journal The Historical Expertise and a member of the editorial boards of the journals Ethnic History of the Peoples of Europe and the Journal of Ukrainian History. His research interests include Memory Studies, Historiography, the Decembrist Movement, and Perestroika. During his fellowship, Dr. Latysh will work on his research project “Politics of Memory during the Russo-Ukrainian War”.
Marian Lopata is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science of Ukrainian Catholic University. He graduated from the Centre of East European Studies at the University of Warsaw in 2011 (Poland). He received his PhD in 2015 (thesis entitled “Comparative analysis of the formation, stability, and efficiency of the Coalition Governments in Visegrad Group countries”) at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Ukraine). His research interests include the political transformation of the Central-East European countries, political preferences of national minorities, national minorities issues, political parties and party systems, and voting behaviour in Eastern Europe. Since 2017 he has participated in academic mobility programs with several European universities. Dr. Lopata was a fellow of the Lane Kirkland Research Scholarship Program at Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland). In 2019 he obtained the Iwan Wyhowski Award from the Centre for East European Studies of the University of Warsaw and conducted a scientific internship at the University of Bialystok and Warmian-Mazurian University. During his fellowship, he will conduct research on the political activities of national minorities in Ukraine from 2014 to the commencement of the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022.
Olena Lytvyn is an Associate Professor at the International Finance Department of Educational and Scientific Institute of International Relations Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, where she is responsible for international cooperation activity, teaching, research and methodological issues. Her research focuses on sustainable development, international economic integration and globalization, international investment and banking, international competitiveness and world commodity markets. She has been engaged in various international projects and participated in academic programs of the Estonian Business School (2023), ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium (2019), College of Europe Natolin Campus, Poland (2019), Institute for European Studies of Vrije Brussel University, Belgium and Vienna Diplomatic Academy, Austria (2016), Joint Vienna Institute, IMF, Austria (2011). She has published numerous articles on sustainable development, European integration, business activity and investment stimulating process, digital transformation and innovative technologies in the economy.
Roman Molikevych is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Ecology at Kherson State University, Ukraine. His research interests lie in human geography, focusing on health geography, migrations, ecology, and the application of geospatial Technologies. He holds a PhD in Geographical Sciences from the Institute of Geography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where his dissertation explored the health status of populations in the Kherson region. Dr. Molikevych serves as the Head of the educational program “Secondary Education (Geography)” at Kherson State University and has received recognition for his work as a scientific mentor. He also works on improving the quality of training young people in geography as an expert on accreditation of educational programs of the National Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education.
Vadym Osin is a political scientist, an Associate Professor at the Department of History and Political Theory, Institute of Human and Social Sciences, Dnipro University of Technology (Ukraine). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science in 2003 from Dnipropetrovsk National University. Thesis title is Content analysis as means of political science constitution and reproduction. His main research interests are politics of knowledge in the post-Soviet space and the impact of Ukraine’s neopatrimonial political regime on academia, sociology of science, postcolonial theory, and history of political science. He is the author of more than 70 studies, including monographs and has developed numerous academic courses for BA and MA students enrolled in the Political Science program. His published works include Processes of constitution and reproduction in science: researching content analysis variations (Dnipropetrovsk, 2007), Power and Knowledge in Post-Soviet Space: Political Regime, Academic Degree, Ideology and Career in Ukraine and Moldova (co-authored with Angela Zelenschi and Sergiy Shulyak, Vilnius, 2014), Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in the context of geopolitical strategies of the USA, EU and the Russian Federation: axiological ideals and forced praxis of executive and legislative powers in Ukraine (content analysis of press) (collective monograph, Torun, 2015), and Scientists and Power in the context of political science in post-Soviet Ukraine (collective monograph, Kyiv, 2016).
Valeriia Palii is a Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv graduate and holds a PhD in Psychology. She has experience in teaching, psychological counseling, development of psychological tests, and managing international teams to implement various psychological initiatives in Ukraine. Since 2020, she has been the President of the National Psychological Association, the largest professional association of psychologists in Ukraine. She is a co-founder of the Psychological Support Hotline, which operates free of charge in Ukraine and abroad. She is the recipient of the Presidential Award for Significant Contributions to the Development of Psychology from the American Psychological Association and holds the European Certificate in Psychology EuroPsy.
Iryna Rabotyagova is an Associate Professor of Political Science at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. In 2014 she received her PhD in Political Science and successfully defended her paper, “Political Markets in the World Symbolic Differentiation System: The Institutional and Anthropological Dimension” at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Since 2016 Dr. Rabotyagova has been a regular annual participant in the Global Politics Workshop project of the Center for Global Policy of the Free University of Berlin in Lviv. She has presented at and participated in numerous conferences around the globe, including the 2017 PONARS Eurasia conference in Kharkiv and at the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance in Colombo, Sri-Lanka.
Taras Samchuk is an assistant at the department of ancient and modern history of Ukraine (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) and an analyst at the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. His research interests include Ukrainian culture and art history in the context of cultural diplomacy and postcolonial studies. In 2016-2017, he was a fellow at the «Democracy Study Centre» project supported by the German Foreign Ministry and a fellow of the Programme for Young Scientists supported by the Polish government. In 2021-2023, Dr. Samchuk was a mentor in «Connecting Memory», a Ukrainian-German project with the mission of honoring and protecting sites of remembrance for the victims of National Socialist mass crimes. During his fellowship, Dr. Samchuk will conduct research on the “Representation of Ukrainian culture and art abroad during the Cold War”.
Alla Zakharchenko is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Odesa Mechnikov National University, Ukraine. From 2003 to 2015 she served as Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Kyiv (2006). She is currently a key staff member of the Jean Monnet module “MEDITERreg. The Ring of Mediterranean: Regional Studies” (2022-2025). She is also an Academic Council member of European Association of Israeli Studies (EAIS). Dr. Zakharchenko’s area of expertise includes US foreign policy, political transformations and problems of security in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific region. She has been honored with scholarships from U.S. Department of States, Brandeis University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies among others. Since 2022 she has been a participant of academic mobility at Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University and the Centre for High Defense Studies (CASD), Rome. Dr. Zakharchenko’s wartime research focuses on the response of the Global South to the war in Ukraine.
2023 - 2024 Fellows Petrach Program on Ukraine
2023 - 2024 Fellows Petrach Program on Ukraine
Resident Fellows
Oleksandr Fisun is a professor of political science and the department head at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine (B.A. with Highest Honors in Political Economy, 1987; C.Sc. in Philosophical Sciences, 1990; D.Sc. habil in Political Science, 2009). His research interests concentrate on Ukrainian and post-Soviet politics. During the past ten years, he has held visiting fellowships at the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, & Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington (Seattle); the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta (Edmonton); the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki; the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute; the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam); the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto; the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (Warsaw), and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. His publications include “Democracy, Neopatrimonialism, and Global Transformations” (Kharkiv, 2006) and numerous book chapters and articles on comparative democratization, informal politics, neopatrimonialism, and regime change in Ukraine and post-Soviet Eurasia. He serves as President of the “Observatory of Democracy” policy research center in Kharkiv, which he founded in 2016 with a group of political experts to improve democratic accountability, civic activism, free and fair elections, and citizen awareness in eastern frontline Ukrainian regions. During his fellowship, Dr. Oleksandr Fisun will work on his research project, “The Puzzle of Ukrainian Democracy: Presidents, Oligarchs and Informal Politics after the Euromaidan Revolution.”
Uliana Movchan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. She has conducted research on Ukrainian politics at the University of California, San Diego (2012-2013), Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (2017), Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at University of Toronto (2019), Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University (2021-2022), University of Tübingen (2022), and Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (2022-2023). She has also been a project manager and expert on projects funded by international foundations such as the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the International Visegrad Fund.
Kateryna Ruban is a historian who received her Ph.D. from New York University in September 2022. In her dissertation, Dr. Ruban explores the role of abortion in Soviet life and argues that for doctors this medical procedure was a part of female emancipation both in the early Soviet and postwar periods. Her findings are based on a microhistory of a provincial hospital in the town of Irshava in Transcarpathia (Western Ukraine) and a memoir of a Soviet Ukrainian obstetrician-gynecologist who worked there. Earlier, Kateryna earned master’s degrees at Central European University in Hungary and at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine. Before coming to the US, she was a part of the Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv. Kateryna has published numerous short articles on current political events in both Ukrainian and English. During her stay at IERES, Dr. Ruban will turn her dissertation into a book, provisionally entitled Female Emancipation in OBGYNs’ Hands: Dr. Nina Holopatiuk and the Short History of Abortion in the USSR. She will also continue her research on how Russian academia presents the war in Ukraine and its role in this war for the Western audience.
Polina Sinovets is Head of the Odesa Center for Nonproliferation (OdCNP) and also an Associate Professor in the Faculty of International Relations, Political Science and Sociology at Odesa’s Mechnikov National University, Ukraine. Her expertise is in nuclear history and policy, military history, Ukraine, and Russia. From 2004 to 2012 she was a Senior Research Associate at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies. In 2006, she was a Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome in 2015, and a Fulbright Scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation in 2017 (in Washington, DC). She has published numerous articles on nuclear deterrence, disarmament, missile defense, and nonproliferation in Ukrainian, Russian, and English.
Non-Resident Fellows
Iryna Baltaziuk completed her Doctor of Philosophy study in Theory and History of Art at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, Ukraine. For the past year, she has been affiliated as a visiting scholar at Indiana University in Bloomington (USA), as part of the nonresidential program. In 2022, with the support of a scholarship from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, Iryna published the book “Portrait archive: the war diary” dedicated to her personal experience of life in the war. She has been honored with awards and grants, including Bösenberg-Foundation prize (2023), Ukrainian Cultural Foundation stipend (2022), “Jam Factory” Art Center Grant (2022), “PEN America” Foundation grant (2022), Ukraine President grant (2019), Kyiv Mayor Award for special achievements of youth in the development of the capital of Ukraine (2018), Diploma of International academy of the rating technologies and sociology “Golden Fortune” (2018 and 2016) and more. Her main research interests are in the study of the language of symbols in works of modern art and cover several related disciplines such as visual communication, lexicon of modern art, interpretation of artworks, modifications of universal symbols on national ground and more.
Olena Bordilovska has been a Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, Kyiv under the President of Ukraine since September 2022. She is also a part-time lecturer at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University (Institute of International Relations, Indologist Department). From 2019-2022 she served as Second Secretary at the Embassy of Ukraine in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where she was responsible for humanitarian cooperation, culture and information. Prior to that she was on the staff of the Institute of International Relations Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, Department of International Relations and Foreign Policy, where she specialized on South Asia in Global Affairs and the “Asian Century” as a current trend in international affairs. She has been a visiting lecturer at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India (2005, 2007), Jagiellonian university, Poland (2013), American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2015), Qaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan (2017), and Manipal Academy of Higher Education (university), India (2018).
Vitalii Lebediuk is an Associate Professor at the Department of National Security and Political Science and the Director of the School for Political Analysis “Polis” at the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ukraine). He received his PhD in 2012 and is currently studying for the Doctoral (habilitation) program in Political Science at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Ukraine). His research interests include democratization, political parties and party systems, and election systems and voting behavior in Eastern Europe. Since 2010 he has participated in academic mobility programs with several European universities. Dr. Lebediuk was a fellow of the Lane Kirkland Research Scholarship Program at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University (Lublin, Poland). He served as academic coordinator of the Erasmus+ project “European Values and Identity Studies” and coordinator of the program “The Comparative Study of Democratization: Transition Politics in V4 countries and Ukraine” (V4EaP Visegrad University Studies Grant). He is also the academic supervisor of the Eastern Studies double-degree master’s programme of the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ukraine) and the Centre for East European Studies University of Warsaw (Poland). He is the editor-in-chief of a peer-reviewed academic journal “Agora. Social Sciences Journal.” During his fellowship, Dr. Lebediuk will conduct research on “Electoral and Non-Electoral Participation in Ukraine: Do Political Attitudes, Social Class or Religiosity Matter?”
Myroslava Lendel is the Professor of the Department of the Political Science and Public Administration of Uzhhorod National University, Director of the Research Institute of Central Europe, as well as one of the founders of the Research and Development Center “Borderland” based in Uzhhorod, Ukraine. She focuses on local governance and regionalism in Central Europe, as well as on security in the region, mainly its migration and cross border aspects. Dr. Lendel is the author of several publications on the Europeanization of policy in Ukraine, and its subregional and regional integration. She developed a methodology for the analysis of local political institutions, processes, and cultural orientations of citizens in countries that are undergoing systemic transformation. Past positions include Senior Research Associate of the National Institute of the Strategic Studies (2011-2018), Expert of the East West Institute (1997-2007), Manager of the Carpathian Foundation (1997-2000), team leader of several research and cross border development projects supported by EU programs and other international funds and organizations.
Vitaliy Lytvyn is Professor at the Department of Political Science of Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine. He received his PhD in Political Science in 2010 (with the dissertation “Comparative analysis of government stability in Central European countries and Ukraine”) and ScD in Political Science in 2018 (with the dissertation “Institutional, procedural, political and behavioral attributes and varieties of semi-presidential system of government: comparative analysis on the example of European countries”), both from Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Dr. Lytvyn specializes in political institutions and systems, party and electoral systems, political regimes, systems of government, semi-presidentialism, inter-institutional relations, and constitutional engineering. He is the author of more than 100 studies, including monographs and has developed numerous academic courses. Dr. Lytvyn also works as an analyst, political scientist and head of research programs at the Center for Political Studies in Ukraine. During his fellowship, he will conduct research devoted to the issues of potential impact of various political systems and institutional designs as specific correlates of war or peace.
Igor Lyman is Doctor of History, Professor, Head of the Department of History and Philosophy, Coordinator of International Relations of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University, Head of the Expert Council of National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance (Ukraine), Member of Presidium of NGO “Innovative University”, Coordinator of Scholar Support Office. Spheres of research activities: Ukrainian Diaspora, History of International Relations, Regional History (History of the South of Ukraine), Maritime History, Religious History, Social History, Oral History, Urban History, Gender Studies, Historiography, Archeography, History of Education, Modernization of the educational system of Ukraine. He has presented research in Ukraine, Mexico, Turkey, and various countries throughout the European Union. His books and articles have appeared in more than seven languages and over a dozen countries.
Olena Muradyan is Dean of the School of Sociology (since 2015), an Associate professor (Docent) at Political Sociology Department (since 2013); Candidate of Science in Sociology (Ph.D.) (2011) and Gender Commissioner (since 2022) at V.N.Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her research focuses on social inequality, gender sociology, social values, political sociology, higher education, urban food policy, international comparative sociological studies.
Elmira Muratova is a political science scholar specializing in Crimean Tatars’ identity and religion. She was previously employed in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Taurida National University in Simferopol. Dr. Muratova was a Research Fellow at the Aarhus University, University of Kansas, University College London, Humboldt University in Berlin, and Charles University in Prague. From 2009–2014, she provided policy analysis and consultations to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. She obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science from Taurida National University, where she researched Islamic revival in post-Soviet Crimea. Dr. Muratova is the author and editor of several books and has more than sixty research articles and book chapters in the areas of Crimean Tatars’ identity and religion, and ethnic and religious developments in Crimea. Her last (co-authored) book, Crimean Tatars under the Changes in Political Arena, was published in 2020.
Viktor Stepanenko is a Chief Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv and Editor-in-chief of the journal “Sociology: Theory, Methods and Marketing” (http://en.stmm.in.ua/). He earned his Ph.D. form the University of Manchester in 1998 and defended the title of Doctor of Science in Sociology at the Institute of Sociology in Kyiv in 2016. His research interests include the issues of post-authoritarian transformation, democratization and of civil society. He is also studying societal and ethno-political problematics in contemporary social theory. Dr. Stepanenko’s recent publications include editing and writing to the books “Ukraine after Euromaidan: Challenges and Hopes” (Bern: Peter Lang, 2015), “Civil society: Discourses and Practices” (Kyiv, 2016) and “COVID-19 pandemics in Ukraine: social consequences” (Kyiv, 2021).
Oleg Yarosh is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Sector of History of Oriental Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, Ukraine. His research interests are focused on comparative studies in Intellectual History, Islamic Studies, and the Anthropology of Religion. Dr. Yarosh has actively participated in academic mobility programs including in Denmark, Germany, Poland, Sweden, the US, and the UK. He has published extensively both in Ukraine and abroad on topics such as Islam and Sufism in Ukraine and Central-Eastern Europe, Political Islam, Religious Studies, and Cultural Studies theory. His published works include Mass and Popular Culture: Theories and Practices (co-authored with Taras Luty, Kyiv 2007), Ideology: Matrix of Illusions, Discourses, and Power (co-authored with Taras Luty, Kyiv 2016), and Islam in the Public Sphere: Theories and Social Practices (Kyiv 2020). Dr. Yarosh is a contributor to the book series “Yearbook of Muslims in Europe”, in which he covers Islam and Muslims in Ukraine (Leiden, Brill). During his fellowship, Dr. Yarosh will work on his research project titled “Ukrainian Refugees and Muslim Religious Philanthropy in Poland and Germany”.
Yaryna Zakalska is a leading folklorist at the Folklore and Ethnography Centre of the Educational and Research Institute of Philology of the Taras Shevchenko National University, Kyiv. Her main interests are connected with the folklore of difficult existential social periods. She has studied the folklore of the Revolution of Dignity and the modern Russian-Ukrainian War prior to 2021. During her fellowship, she will be comparing folklore material created after the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion with that of the Ukrainian resistance movements of the 20th century and of the armed struggle of other ethnic groups. Dr. Zakalska received her Ph.D. in Folklore studies in 2021. She has taught at the National Aviation University (Kyiv) and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2016-2017, 2020-2021) and has given public lectures at home and abroad, particularly in Lithuania, Poland, Estonia and Austria.
Yuriy Zaliznyak is Associate Professor of Journalism at the Ivan Franko University of Lviv. His journalism career began as an intern, reporter, editor and anchor in local, national and international newsrooms including BBC Ukrainian Service (2002-2003), The Guardian (2003) and Radio Deutsche Welle (2004-2006). His dissertation (2007) was titled “Ethical intellectualism in publicistic writings of Ivan Dziuba and Vaclav Gavel”. His areas of interest include new media, social networks, modern methods of information manipulation, journalism standards, media ethics, and cognitive warfare. In 2018-2019 he was appointed as a Fulbright Scholar to the US with a project on fake news influence on journalism. He periodically conducts trainings and masterclasses as an expert for the Pypyp Orlyk Institute of Democracy in different cities of Ukraine. Since February 2022 Yuriy Zaliznyak has been a local producer with ABC News covering the unprovoked Russian war against Ukraine.
Ruslan Zaporozhchenko is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Sociology, School of Sociology, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. In September 2022 – March 2023, he was a Non-Residential Researcher at The New School for Social Research. He teaches courses in “Political Science”, “Conflict Studies”, “Political Communications”, and “Geopolitical Studies”. His research interests focus on the study of empires and imperialism, social and political space, sociology of power and sociology of ideology, social divisions and cleavages, postcolonial studies, with a special emphasis on Ukraine and the post-Soviet space. His articles and chapters in monographs have been published in Problems of Post-Communism, Ideology and Politics Journal, Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, and Studia Regionalne i Lokalne, Palgrave Macmillan, Ibidem-Verlag.