2023-2024 Non-residential & residential scholars

Oksana Semenik is an art historian, journalist, researcher, and creator of the Twitter account "Ukrainian art history." Her texts about Ukrainian contemporary art were published in Ukrainian media, such as Ukrainian Pravda, Lb.ua, Local History, Your Art, Korydor, Vogue Ukraine, Magazyn RTV (Poland), etc. She also worked as a communication specialist at a small book publishing ‘ist,’ Dovzhenko Center, Goethe Institute, etc. 

Last year, Semenik worked at Zimmerli Museum as an assistant curator and researcher. Her main research topic was the decolonization of Ukrainian art in the museum collection. She studied Art history at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv University and Rutgers University (NJ). Her thesis topic is the Image of the Chornobyl catastrophe in Ukrainian art. 

Semenik now works as an independent art historian. She is also prepares a radio program for Radio Culture about Ukrainian art history on the national broadcast company Suspilne. Semenik continues her research about the Image of the Chornobyl Catastrophe and has started new research about Maria Prymachenko, contemporary Ukrainian art and traditional art, and Holodomor. Semenik is the curator and teacher of Art in project Zminotvortsi (free courses for teenagers from Ukrainian villages). She is based in Kyiv, Ukraine. 

Project Title: Image of Chornobyl Catastrophe in Ukrainian Art. Image of the Land and Contemporary Catastrophes in Contemporary Ukrainian Art after Full-Scale Invasion.

Illia Chedoluma has a BA from the Department of History, Political Science, and International Relations at the Yuriy Fedkovych National University in Chernivtsi and an MA from the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. He obtained his Ph.D. in History at the Ukrainian Catholic University. The title of his dissertation was «Mykhailo Rudnytsky: An Intellectual Biography (1889–1975)». which he wrote under the supervision of Dr. Yaroslav Hrytsak. Cheloduma publicly defended his dissertation on 21 February 2022. Dr. Ola Hnatiuk and Dr. Timothy Snyder were his official opponents. Chedoluma's main scientific interest lie is on the topic of the Ukrainian-Jewish relationship in intellectual history during the late 19th century and its development throughout the 20th century. His current research focus is on Ukrainian liberalism through the point of Ukrainian-Jewish relationships and the Jewish context in the Ukrainian intellectual history of the 20th century. 

Project Title: Mykhailo Rudnytsky: An Intellectual Biography (1889-1975).

Rostyslav Melnykiv is a Ukrainian scholar, poet and editor from Kharkiv. He is currently the Head of Ukrainian Literature Department named after Professor Leonid Ushkalov at the H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. His area of interest is Ukrainian literature of the 20^th century with a focus on the 1920s and 1930s. Melnykiv prepared the publication of «Selected works» by the leading figures of the Ukrainian literature of the 1920s in Kharkiv, such as Maik Johansen (2001 and 2009), Serhiy Pylypenko (2007), Mykola Khvylovy (2009) and the full collection of Mykola Khvylovyi’s works in five volumes (2018–2023). He also wrote a series of literary portraits of Ukrainian writers of the 1920s: Leonid Chernov-Maloshyichenko, Hryhoriy Kosynka, Maik Johansen, Volodymyr Svidzinskyi, Serhiy Pylypenko, Mykola Khvylovy, Valerian Polishchuk, Olexa Slisarenko, Mykhail Semenko etc. Rostyslav Melnykiv is the author of the monograph “Maik Johansen: Landshafty transformatsii» (Maik Johansen: Landscapes of Transformations, 2000) and the book of essays “Literaturni 1920-ti: Postati (Narysy, obrazky, etiudy)” (The Literary 1920s: Figures (Sketches, Portraits, and Essays), 2013. As an author and poet, he actively participates in Ukraine’s literary life, organizes events and readings, and publishes poetry. His poetry books include «Poliuvannia na Olenia» (Deer Hunting, 1996), «Podorozh Rivnodenniam» (Journey through the equinox, 2000), «Apokryfy stepu» (Apocrypha of the steppe, 2016). His poetry has been translated into English, Bosnian, Italian, German, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Czech.

Project title: The slogan “Get away from Moscow!”, Khvylovyi Syndrome and Literary Kharkiv 1921-2021

Rostyslav Melnykiv’s engagement is supported by Dr. Ann Komaromi’s “Dissident Legacy” project.

Mariia Shuvalova is a Ph.D. Candidate and Lecturer at the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (Kyiv, Ukraine). Her major fields are comparative and contemporary Ukrainian literature, and her minor are identity, memory studies, and translation. She runs the Ukrainian Open Access Translation Series at Academic Studies Press (Boston, MA). Previously, she worked for five years as an editorial assistant and book review section editor at Ukrainian Scopus and Web of Science-indexed English-language peer-reviewed journal Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal. Shuvalova is a co-founder of NGO New Ukrainian Academic Community. In 2019-2020, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Her recent publications include "First Go Novels, Then Go Tanks. Contemporary Russian Military Fiction (2009-2022) and Ukrainian Literature About the War (2015-2022),” in Russia’s War in Ukraine 2022, edited by Tamara Martseniuk and Tetiana Kostiuchenko (ibidem Press/Columbia University Press, 2023), columns for The Daily Beast, New York Magazine, #春山文藝 (Springhill Literati, Taiwanese Literary Magazine).

Project title: Between Documenting and Surviving. Contemporary Ukrainian Literature About Full-Scale Invasion

Yuriy Skira has a PhD in History from the I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University. His research is primarily focused on the rescue of Jews by the clergy and monks of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church during the Holocaust.  His recent publications include a book, They Were Called Upon: the Monks of the Studite Rule and the Holocaust (2019), as well as articles such as "The Sheltering of Faina Lacher by the Monks and nuns of the Studite Rule during the Holocaust" in Herald of the M. Kotsiubynskyi Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University, 25. (2017, In Ukrainian); "The Rescue of the Stern Family by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky in the Memoirs of Lili Pohlmann" in Herald of the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, 2 (2017, In Ukrainian); and "The Relationship of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky with the Jews of Galicia up to the beginning of the Second World War" in Eastern European historical Herald, 3 (2018, In Ukrainian). Dr. Skira's research has been supported by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (USA), the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S., R.F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, amongst others.

Project title: The Greek Catholic Church and the Holocaust: The Lines of Rescue and Resistance

Vitaly Chernoivanenko has a PhD in History from the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. He is a senior research fellow at the Judaica Department of the Institute of Manuscript at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. He also serves as a president of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies and is the chief editor of Judaica Ukrainica. Chernoivanenko taught Jewish history and religion at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy for twelve years. In 2017 and 2018, he was a visiting professor at the Université de Montréal. In 2022-2023, he was a non-resident visiting scholar at Indiana University. Chernoivanenko’s research areas include biblical interpretation, Second Temple Judaism (Dead Sea Scrolls), homoeroticism in Jewish religion and culture and also the history of Jewish-Ukrainian and Israeli-Ukrainian relations, postage stamps, coins and paper money.

Project Title: Jewish-Ukrainian Intellectual Cooperation in the 1960-90s.

Andriy Posunko defended his PhD thesis at Central European University in 2018.

His research focused on the social and military history of Cossack units in the Pontic Steppe region. Posunko's other publications deal with the peculiarities of irregular military service in Southern Ukraine, Bessarabia, and the Caucasus; trans-imperial movement of people, goods and ideas between Romanov, Ottoman, and Habsburg empires; as well as ambiguities of social and legal status of the inhabitants in the borderlands contested by these three states.

Since February 2022, Andriy has been serving in the Ukrainian army.

Project Title: The Transformation of 'New Russia': From Frontier to Province to Myth

Oleksiy Vinnychenko has a PhD in history and is an associate professor at the Department of the Ancient Ukrainian History and Special Historical Disciplines at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine. The topic of his PhD dissertation was "The Noble Dietines of the Ruthenian and Bełz Voivodeships of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Last Quarter of the 16th – the First Half of the 17th Centuries" (2002). His research interests include history of Ukrainian lands in Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Modern Time, nobility, the Diet Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and dietines Ukrainian provinces, Early Modern Lviv, source studies.

Project title: Infida Pax: War and Peace with the Moscow / Russian State in the vision of the Ukrainian nobility in the 17th-18th centuries

Valeriy Vasylyev, PhD, is currently a Senior Researcher and former Head of the Centre of Historical and Encyclopedic Studies (2010-2020) at the Institute of History of Ukraine of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His research interests include the study of relations between Kremlin and the leadership of Soviet Ukraine, political repressions of Soviet Communist and Nazi regimes in Ukraine, Holodomor. Vasylyev is the author of the “Political leadership of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR: the dynamics of relations between the center and the sub-center of power. 1917-1938. K., 2014”, co-ed. “Party and Soviet leadership of the Ukrainian SSR during the Holodomor of 1932-1933: Leaders. Workers. Activists. A collection of documents and materials. K., 2013”, “Commanders of the Great Famine. Trips of Molotov and Kaganovich in Ukraine and the North Caucasus. 1932-1933. K., 2001”.  

Project title: Hunger as a Weapon of Empire. 1932-1933; 2022-2023

Valeriy Vasylyev’s engagement is supported by the Holodomor Education and Research Consortium at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. 

Svitlana Luparenko is a Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences and a Professor of the Department of Educology and Innovative Pedagogy in H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University in Kharkiv. She has authored about 250 scientific papers, including 3 monographs (2 co-authored), 10 articles in journals indexed in Scopus, Web of Science databases, about 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, about 100 conference proceedings. Luparenko is also an Editor-in-Chief of a scientific journal “Teaching languages in higher educational institutions at the present stage. Interdisciplinary links” in V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and a member of the editorial board of the journal “New Collegium.” Luparenko’s research interests include the following areas: historical and contemporary problems of childhood (education, health maintenance, cultural development, attitude to children) in Ukraine and in the world; Waldorf education; cultural and educational heritage of Ukraine and other countries of the world; children’s literature; social, educational and cultural societies for children (history and contemporary).

Project title: Children at Wartime (the 20th - 21st centuries)

Zoryana Skaletska (PhD) is a Doctor of Law (Poland) and an associate professor Department of International and European Law School of Law of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Skaletska is the co-author of draft laws, expert papers for the Ukrainian Parliament and the Government, international projects and organizations since 2007, Minister of Health of Ukraine (2019-2020). She has more than 15 years of teaching Medical Law, Administration and Public Health related courses to students, lawyers, physicians and medical managers, journalists. She has developed a number of trainings, master classes and seminars.

Project title: Ukrainian policies of prevention domestic violence and a mental health: war and post-war challenges

Liudmyla Taran’s works focus on the place of modern woman in the Ukrainian society. Some of the publications on this topic include non-fiction book An Apple Tree («Яблуня»); Interviews, Stories about Daughters-Writes and their Mothers (Інтерв’ю, нариси про дочок-письменниць та їхніх матерів. 2019), A Woman’s Role. Literary Articles (Жіноча роль».)  Літературознавчі статті. 2007) and others. In 2007, she won the grant Research Support Scheme that supported the project Women in Post-totalitarian, Post-Colonian Society: Ukrainian Case. Her interviews have been published in Three Conversations: The Search for Gender Justice (by Liudmyla Taran), in the book Mapping Difference: The Many Facts of Women in Contemporary Ukraine edited by Marian J. Rubchak. She has also developed the image of a modern woman in Ukraine in a number of prose books, such as Molodista (2021), Last Woman, Last Man (2016) and others. Taran won the prize of the UN Program Gender in Development precisely for the journalistic interpretation of the image of a modern woman (1998).  She is the member of the NGO Women and Mass Media, Kyiv Institute of Gender Studies and the National Union of Writers, Association of Ukrainian Writers,  and Ukrainian PEN. Her texts were also translated and published in the Australia, Great Britain, Canada, Lithuania, Poland, USA and the Czech Republic.

Project title: Red On Black. Herstories of Ukrainian Women: From Witness Trauma to Life Affirmation

Kyrylo Tkachenko is a historian, philosopher, sociologist. He studied philosophy in Kyiv (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) and Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) and is currently a doctoral student at the Viadrina University (Frankfurt am Oder), preparing his dissertation on the miners' movement in Donbas in 1989-1993. In addition to numerous articles and essays on philosophical, historical, and sociological topics, he has published a monograph on the American prison system, "Der Fall Mumia Abu Jamal: Rassismus, strafender Staat und die US-Gefängnisindustrie" (Münster: Unrast Verlag, 2012) and the study "Right Door to the Left: The German Radical Left and the Revolution and War in Ukraine, 2013-2018 (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2019). Tkachenko has also compiled of a collection of articles on the transformation of Ukrainian society after the collapse of the Soviet Union, "Twenty Years of Capitalism in Ukraine: The Story of an Illusion" (Kyiv: ArtKnyha, 2015)."

Project title: Winning Germany for the Ukrainian Cause, Winning Ukraine for Europe

Pavlo Fedorchenko-Kutuev is a Professor and Sociology Department Chair at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. While his educational background is in sociology, Fedorchenko-Kutuev regularly pursues interdisciplinary research that lies within the fields of comparative politics and developmental studies.  His research has been focusing on re-interpretation of discourse on modernity and modernization from the perspective of dramatic societal transformations in Ukraine. As a scholar Fedorchenko-Kutuev has always been fascinated with the phenomenon of modernity and diverse roads to modern society, which led him to view the state as a change agent capable of embarking on the journey towards modernity and development. Thus, having begun with delving into abstract social theory, he then switched to more pragmatic and policy-oriented historical sociology aimed at understanding progressive social change.  In response to Ukraine’s governmental request Fedorchenko-Kutuev and his colleagues set up the innovative program in conflict resolution and mediation at KPI Sociology Department. He has held a number of visiting fellowships at different universities and research centers, including Fulbright fellowship at NYU and stints at Oxford, Tokyo, Vienna and Stanford.

Project Title: Dreams of the State Capacity: Is Ukraine Developmental Tiger Possible?

Anna Romandash is an award-winning journalist from Ukraine and an author of Women of Ukraine: Reportages from the War and Beyond. She has extensive experience working across Eastern Europe and Central Asia where she researched democratization processes, freedom movements, and human rights violations. Her areas of interest include international security, Eastern Europe, sanctions, and energy transition. Romandash is the Fourth Freedom Forum’s first Howard S. Brembeck Fellow, a Research Affiliate at the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College, and a digital scholar at Vassar College. She holds an MGA degree from the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

Project: Digital Warfare and Peace: Learning from Europe’s Response to Russian Invasion