Cambridge Ukrainian Studies Podcast

Russia has amassed an estimated 150,000 troops along Ukraine's borders. To come to grips with this dramatic escalation of Europe's eight-year undeclared war, we focus on the vulnerabilities of Ukraine's southern border and the broader questions of Black Sea security, especially in the context of Turkish-Ukrainian-Russian relations. How does Nato member Turkey view Russia’s escalating aggression against Ukraine? What is the importance of occupied Crimea to this crisis, and how does it relate to the war in Donbas and the threat of further violence? Renowned experts from Ukraine and Turkey tackle these questions and more in this discussion.

Our panelists included Asli Aydıntaşbaş (European Council on Foreign Relations), Petro Burkovskyi (Democratic Initiatives Foundation), and Volodymyr Dubovyk (Mechnikov National University, Odesa). The discussion was moderated by Rory Finnin (University of Cambridge) on Monday, 31 January 2022.

The event was part of the free, public webinar series organised by Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, an academic centre at the University of Cambridge.

In 2020, a new book was published by Indiana University Press: 'The Burden of the Past: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine', edited by Anna Wylegała and Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper. Wulf Kansteiner has described the book as 'a milestone of the scholarship about Eastern European politics of memory and a compelling plea for the need to further de-Westernize the field of memory studies'.

Olenka Pevny (Director, CUS) discussed the book with four of its contributors: Olesya Khromeychuk (Kings College London), Daria Mattingly (University of Cambridge), Matthew Pauly (Michigan State University), and Anna Wylegała (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences). The conversation took place in July 2020.

This CUS conversation provides an update on the political scene in Ukraine and focuses on the reforms enacted under Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk in 2019-2020. Oleksiy Honcharuk is a lawyer and politician who served as Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, and as the youngest Prime Minister of Ukraine, from August 2019 until March 2020.

Mr. Honcharuk spoke with Dr Olenka Pevny and Andrii Smytsniuk of the University of Cambridge in June 2020.

In this podcast Olenka Pevny and Andrii Smytsniuk speak with Olesya Ostrovska-Lyuta about cultural politics in Ukraine and on the role that art institutions play in its cultural policies.

Olesya Ostrovska-Lyuta is the Director of Mystetskyi Arsenal Art and Culture Museum Complex. She is also former Vice-Minister of Culture of Ukraine. ‘Mystets'kyi Arsenal’ (‘Art Arsenal’) is a public cultural institution, museum, and art exhibition complex which occupies a historic 60,000 square metre space in the centre of Kyiv. The mission of ‘Mystets'kyi Arsenal’ is to raise public awareness of the social and cultural issues facing the nation and to serve as a conduit for cultural exchange with the international community.

In this podcast, Serhii Plokhii -- Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) -- spoke with University of Cambridge students enrolled in Paper (course) SL9 (Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture of Ukraine) and in Paper SL12 (Socialist Russia from 1917-1991). Collectively, these Cambridge students have read Plokhii's books 'The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine', 'Lost Kingdom: A History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin', 'Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography', and a number of his scholarly articles.

Professor Plokhii has written extensively on such topics as the origins of Slavic nations, the Cossak period in Ukraine, the history of Russian nationalism, the Cold War, the Yalta Conference, Chornobyl', and the figures of Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi and Stepan Bandera. Professor Plokhii has won numerous awards for his publications, all of which position Ukraine in the cultural framework of European history.

The conversation was recorded on 18 May 2020.

In this webinar, Olenka Pevny and Andrii Smytsniuk speak with Yelyzaveta Yasko, a graduate of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, Ukrainian MP, and the Head of Ukrainian Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. They discuss Ukrainian international relations, Ukraine’s position in PACE, and the Minsk Trilateral Contact Group. The discussion was recorded on 14 May 2020.

In this conversation, Olenka Pevny and Andrii Smytsniuk talk with Professor Serhiy Kvit about the current state of the Ukrainian education system as well as the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown and its impact on the education process and Ukrainian education policy in general.

An online conversation between Dr Alexander Rodnyansky (University Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cambridge and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister of Ukraine), Dr Olenka Pevny (Director, Cambridge Ukrainian Studies), and Andrii Smytsniuk (Language Teaching Officer, Ukrainian). The interview was recorded on 15 April 2020.

Natalie A. Jaresko -- Ukraine's former Finance Minister (2014-2016) -- delivers the Fifteenth Annual Cambridge Stasiuk Lecture in Contemporary Ukrainian Studies. Her presentation at Robinson College, Cambridge on 24 February 2017 was entitled 'Ukraine in Transition'.

The Annual Cambridge Lecture in Medieval and Early Modern Slavonic Studies was launched in 2016 to examine key questions of early Slavonic Studies, with a particular focus on the lands of present-day Ukraine. It features leading scholars who study the ever-changing cultural landscape of the Ukrainian lands and the varied composition and character of their inhabitants from the medieval period to the late eighteenth century.

In line with current trends in scholarship, the series moves beyond deep-rooted national paradigms and adopts a transnational approach to the study of the Rus and Ruthenian past and to the early modern history of Ukraine and its neighbours. It casts Ukraine as a multifocal centre for the formulation and transformation of political notions, social paradigms and cultural identities.

In March 2017, the Second Annual Lecture was delivered by Dr Yury Avvakumov, Assistant Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame. His topic was 'The “Uniates” and the Invention of Eastern Orthodoxy: Late Byzantine and Kyivan Advocates of Church Union in the Crossfire between Rome, Constantinople, and Moscow'.

Prior to joining the Department of Theology at Notre Dame University, Dr Avvakumov taught at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv where he taught Historical Theology before becoming the Rev. Basil Galyarnyk Professor of History, Dean of the Humanities Faculty and Founding Director of the Classical, Byzantine and Medieval Studies Department (2003-2009). He also was Visiting Professor in Church Slavonic at the Ukrainian Free University (2002-2007), Munich, and Lecturer in Latin and Greek language and Patristic literature in the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary and Academy in Leningrad (1984-1991).