The Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) continues to support Ukrainian academics and educate our community about Ukraine through joining the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Nonresidential Scholars Program for Ukraine and hosting two scholars. The Nonresidential Scholars Program is intended to support academics in and from Ukraine to continue to advance their research, writing, and teaching activities. This year’s program theme is “Preservation and Restoration,” especially in the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Throughout the year, these scholars will participate in twice-monthly research seminars, attend virtual professionalization workshops on topics such as academic publishing, interdisciplinary research, and current theoretical trends in Ukrainian studies, led by prominent scholars and editors of leading interdisciplinary and area studies journals.  This spring, the fellows will organize panels and present the results of their research, creative activity, or teaching activities undertaken during the fellowship at the annual (virtual) Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Studies Conference at Indiana University. 

Six BTAA member universities are collaborating to support these Ukrainian scholars at risk: The University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Indiana University (Bloomington), Michigan State University, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Wisconsin (Madison). The program was initiated in 2022 at Indiana U, which remains the lead institution in this collaboration. The IU-Ukraine program has already provided a livelihood for two cohorts of Ukrainian scholars (most of them affiliated with major universities in the country) who must remain in Ukraine for personal, professional, or legal reasons. Some fellows have lost their regular jobs; others are scrambling to combine different hustles to survive in the devastated wartime economy. Their stipends from the program allow them to continue their scholarly work, teaching, and mentorship of students.

Our scholars this year are Yevhen Zakharchenko from Karazin Kharkiv National University and Sofia Dyak from the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. Zakharchenko’s project is entitled: “‘Kharkiv is the first capital’ vs. ‘Kharkiv is reinforced concrete’: Memory and identities in Kharkiv before and after the Russian invasion”. He will work with Ashley Bigham from Ohio State’s Knowlton School of Architecture. Dyak’s project is called “Soviet Ukraine and Communist Poland: the effect of radically redefined borders on the imagination of place and belonging”. Alisa Lin from the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures will be her primary contact.

We look forward to our virtual collaboration with these scholars!