Ukraine Research Group is an informal cooperation and communication forum for scholars whose areas of interest include Ukraine. Founded at Södertörn University (Stockholm) in March 2014, during the peak phase of the Ukrainian crisis, it caters information, emergency analysis and cutting-edge expertise on Ukraine to a wide circle of academics, experts, journalists and wider public. Its main activities include organising roundtables and seminars, maintaining a research blog hosted by Södertörn University, publishing papers and policy briefs, providing accurate and up-to-date information for mass media.
Organising team
Roman Horbyk (coordinator)
Roman Horbyk was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He accomplished his BA and MA degrees with majors in Journalism at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. Roman received an international Master’s degree in “Journalism and Media within Globalisation: a European Perspective” in 2012 with a joint certificate from Universities of Aarhus and Hamburg, having also studied in Amsterdam and completed courses from UC Berkeley.
Roman is presently employed within a multi-disciplinary project “Narratives of Europe” at Södertörn University where he conducts his doctoral research. Academically he is interested in how the media functions within power relations; other topics of interest include postcolonial theory as well as media history, particularly in relation to the popular genres in the 1920s and 1930s.
Roman has also extensively worked as print and TV journalist with a 10-year career. His reports and columns were published in Ukraine, Germany, Brazil and Denmark.
Roman Horbyk speaks Ukrainian, English, German and Russian freely, apart from limited fluency in Swedish, French, Polish.
Interests & expertise: Ukrainian media; classical and contemporary Ukrainian culture; Soviet Ukraine in 1920s and 1930s; languages, identities and ethnolinguistic policies in Ukraine; postcolonial take on Eastern Europe
To contact Roman: +46 8 608 5107, mobile +46 70 233 45 61, e-mail: roman.horbyk@sh.se
Julia Malitska
Julia Malitska is currently a Doctoral Candidate in History at Södertörn University.
Born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, she holds a degree of Candidate of Sciences in History from Dnipropetrovsk National University. The Candidate dissertation is devoted to the history of Swedish colonists in Ukraine (Gammalsvenskby).
Her current project deals with Russia’s colonisation policies and imperialism in the Ukrainian Steppe, Azov and Black Sea region in the 1700s and 1800s.
Interests & expertise: history of national minorities in Ukraine; imperial history of Russia; colonial and gender studies
To contact Julia: +46 8 608 4688, mobile +46 76 568 86 27, e-mail iuliia.malitska [@] sh.se
Olena Podolian
Olena Podolian was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and obtained a BA in Political Science from the National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’. She holds an MA degree (with merits) in Political Science from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and an MSc degree (with distinction) in Russian, Central and East European Studies from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
Olena has worked at the Human Rights Students’ Initiative in Budapest, Hungary, and has undertaken internships, first, with Werner Schulz (MEP) and Heidi Hautala (MEP) at the European Parliament and, second, with the Open Society Institute in Brussels, Belgium.
Currently, Olena is a doctoral student at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, where she studies the role of stateness in post-Soviet regime change.
She is fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, English and German, and has knowledge of Polish, Swedish and French (those languages are indicated in the descending order of proficiency).
Interests & expertise: comparative European politics with focus on post-communist regime change, embracing democratisation, state-building, the rule of law, human rights, and civil society
To contact Olena: +46 8 608 4877, mobile +46 72 944 05 83, e-mail: olena.podolian[@]sh.se
Oksana Udovyk
Oksana Udovyk is currently holding a position as a PhD student for environmental science at the School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University. Her research interests include uncertainty, risk and science policy interactions in environmental governance. Empirically, she focuses on the chemicals management in marine environments.
Besides, Oksana has journalistic and NGO-related experience. She worked with such issues as environmental protection, democratisation in Eastern Europe and youth development in Ukraine, Thailand, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, China.
Interests & expertise: youth and social movements, environment, governance and democratisation
To contact Oksana: +46 8 608 5068, mobile +46 70 436 94 85, oksana.udovyk[@]sh.se
Yuliya Yurchuk
Yuliya Yurchuk was born in Rivne, Ukraine. She got her Master degrees (with merits) from Universities of Rivne, Ukraine, Göttingen, Germany, and Deusto, Spain. Currently she is a PhD Candidate in History affiliated to two universities: Södertörn and Stockholm.
Her research is focused on memory culture in Ukraine. She is going to defend in November 2014. In her dissertation she studies the memory of the war-time nationalist movement in Ukraine represented by Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
She is fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, English and German, and has knowledge of Polish, Swedish, Spanish and French.
Interests & expertise: state and nation-building in Ukraine, history of Eastern Europe, memory politics in post-Communist states
To contact Yuliya: +46 8 608 5017, mobile +46 70 494 76 49, e-mail: yuliya.yurchuk[@]sh.se