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°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Ukrainian Studies is an academic centreÌýin theÌýFaculty of Modern and Medieval LanguagesÌýat the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼. It was launched in 2008 to advance knowledge about Ukraine, the largest country within Europe. °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Ukrainian Studies was made permanent in 2010. Since its inception, the programme has trained over 500 students.
°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Ukrainian Studies works in partnership with theÌýÌý²¹²Ô»å theÌý.
Rory Finnin, Professor of Ukrainian Studies
Rory FinninÌýlaunchedÌý°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ Ukrainian Studies in 2008. He gives lectures and supervisions to undergraduate and postgraduate students on Ukrainian culture and society. He leads Papers SL 9Ìý²¹²Ô»å SL 10Ìý²¹²Ô»å teaches anÌýMPhil moduleÌýin Russian, Polish and Ukrainian literatures and nationalisms.ÌýIn 2015ÌýFinninÌýwon a Teaching Award for Outstanding Lecturer from the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ University Students' Union (CUSU), the representative body for all students at the University.
Finnin's primary research interest is the interplay of culture and identity in Ukraine. He also focuses on the history of colonialism in Crimea and studies Crimean Tatar literature and culture. His broader research interests include nationalism studies, solidarity studies, and cultural memory in the region of the Black Sea.ÌýHis new book,ÌýBlood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of SolidarityÌý(University of Toronto Press, 2022), has won eight international book awards, earning distinctions in the fields of Ukrainian Studies, European Studies, Slavic Studies, nationalism studies, and genocide studies.
Finnin received his PhD in Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He is also a Fellow ofÌý, °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼; formerÌýChair of theÌýÌý(2011-2018); and former Head of theÌýDepartment of Slavonic StudiesÌý(2014-2018). He also directs (with Sander van der Linden in the Department of Social Psychology)Ìýthe University's Special Interest Group on .Ìý
Olenka Pevny, Associate Professor of Early Slavonic History and Culture
Olenka PevnyÌýstudies the art and culture of Kyivan Rus’ and Ruthenia. She is particularly interested in the reception and acculturation of the Orthodox tradition in Eastern Slavic lands and in the place of visual culture in narratives of national, regional, religious and gender identity. Her involvement in conservation and preservation initiatives guides her interest in the ways in which scholars, theorists, politicians and cultural activists in the late Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and contemporary Ukraine and Russia relate to and interact with the medieval past. In the summer of 2016, sheÌýorganisedÌý²¹²Ô»å led a field research trip for °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼ postgraduates to medieval sites of interest in Ukraine.
Prior to arriving in °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼, Dr. Pevny was Associate Professor of Byzantine and Medieval Art History and Chair of the Art and Art History Department at the University of Richmond, VA. She has worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in a curatorial capacity on The Glory of Byzantium exhibition, and as an archaeologist in Crimea and Greece. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Dr. Pevny is completing work on a monograph on the medieval Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria in Kyiv and the transformation in its form and decoration over the centuries. Her current research interests include medieval Chernihiv; confessionalism and visual culture in Volyn’ and Zhytomyr; the Cossack Baroque; and the art and architecture of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Kyiv.
Andrii Smytsniuk, Language Teaching Officer in Ukrainian
Andrii Smytsniuk holds a degree in pedagogical methodology in teaching Ukrainian as a Foreign Language from Ivan FrankoÌýNational University of L'viv. He has taught Ukrainian at the Ukrainian Catholic University in L'viv and, as a Fulbright Scholar, at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
Smytsniuk was a part of the Reform Support Team of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and has consulted the Ukrainian government on questions of education reform and on the development of teaching standards, specifically in the area of ​​language instruction.
In 2020, as a participant of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, Smytsniuk was awarded the Theodosius and Irene Senkowsky Prize for Achievement in Ukrainian Studies. Currently, he s a Chair of °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼4Ukraine, a volunteer initiative founded by four Ukrainians in the UK who decided to do everything and a little more to stop Russia's war against Ukraine. His teaching interests include the use of technology in language teaching; his research interests include the interplay between language and identity, orthography, linguistic policy, and language teaching policy.
Recent PhD Awardees
Name | College | Research Topic | Supervisor |
---|---|---|---|
Daria Mattingly | Robinson College | ʻIdle, Drunk and Good-for-Nothing': The Rank-and-File Perpetrators of 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine | Dr Rory Finnin |
Iryna Shuvalova | St John's College | Voices of the War in Donbas: Exploring Identities through the Prism of War Songs | Dr Rory Finnin |
Jon Roozenbeek | Darwin College | Media and Identity in Wartime Donbas, 2014-2017 | Dr Rory Finnin |
Bohdan Tokarskyi | St John's College | 'A Fragment of Wholeness': The Making of the Poetic Subject in Vasyl Stus's Palimpsests | Dr RoryÌýFinnin |
PhD Candidates
Name | College | Research Topic | Supervisor |
---|---|---|---|
Mariia Terentieva | Queens' College | From Informal Social Capital to Public (Self)-Service: Exploring Digital Civil Society in Post-2013 Ukraine | Dr Rory Finnin |
Ìý
Contact information
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages
Sidgwick Avenue
°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±¼Ç¼
CB3 9DA
Telephone: +44 (0)1223 335 007
Email:Ìýinfo [at] cambridgeukrainianstudies [dot] org