Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

About HURI

Research, Educational and Training Programs, Seminars and Conferences


Research Programs

Support for scholarly research activities is a major focus of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. The Institute provides office space, technical facilities, and access to Harvard's unique resources to researchers -- including HURI Associates at Harvard and other area institutions and Visiting Scholars from throughout the US and foreign countries, with an increasing number from Ukraine.

The Institute has sponsored a number of major research projects, including the first exhaustive study of the Famine of 1932/33 and the Project on the Millennium of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine. HURI is the host institution for the long-running project on Archives in the former Soviet Union and more recently, the ArcheoBiblioBase project on Ukraine and Russia (Dr. Patricia K. Grimsted, project director).

HURI is engaged in collaborative projects with other area studies centers at Harvard, a number of American and foreign institutions, and, increasingly, with academic institutions in Ukraine. For more information on research and academic programs, contact Dr. Lubomyr Hajda.

Educational and Training Programs

Instructional programs in Ukrainian studies are conducted primarily through the Departments of History and Slavic Languages and Literatures, whose faculty are closely associated with HURI. The Seminar in Ukrainian Studies organized by the Institute may be taken for credit by graduate students. HURI organizes the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute annually in conjunction with the Harvard Summer School.

Students with a special interest in Ukraine benefit from consultation with the Institute's academic adviser, as well as with resident faculty, Associates, and Visiting Scholars, especially those from Ukraine. Special programs are organized for the Institute's Student Affiliates, while more advanced Graduate Student Fellows are provided with study space, computer access, and other resources of the Institute. HURI administers a number of graduate student fellowships and awards prizes for student research papers on Ukrainian topics.

Since Ukraine's independence, the Institute has organized a number of programs to enhance familiarity with Ukraine among non-academic professionals in various fields -- business, journalism, government service, and others. The Mid-Career Training Fellows Program offers such professionals a course of individual study, consultations with specialists in Ukrainian fields, access to Institute programs and Harvard libraries, and study space. Problems relevant to contemporary policy analysis, business, trade, and like issues have been the subject of specialized Intensive Summer Seminars for practitioners. Longer and shorter briefing programs on current affairs are organized by arrangement with interested parties.

Seminars and Conferences

The weekly Monday Seminar in Ukrainian Studies is the Institute's major forum for senior scholars and graduate students to present the results of their research and subject them to rigorous discussion. Since its inauguration, the Seminar has offered almost six hundred presentations. Topics presented encompass all disciplines that touch on Ukrainian studies - history, linguistics, literature, art, anthropology, sociology, economics and political science.

A growing interest in Ukraine and ever larger number of Ukrainian specialists at Harvard have created the need for an additional discussion forum. In November 2001 to satisfy this need, HURI formed the "Ukraine Study Group" (USG). While the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies meets usually on Mondays at 4:00 PM for formal presentation and critique of research papers, the USG meets on most Thursdays or on other dates by special announcement for preliminary reports on work in progress, discussion of methodology and debate of more contemporary issues.

Over thirty major conferences, colloquia, and symposia have been organized by the Ukrainian Research Institute since its inception. Thematically these have ranged from examinations of The Ukrainian Religious Experience (1977) to Peasant Society and Culture in Eastern Europe (1992), and from Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation? (1982) to The Military Tradition in Ukrainian History (1994). Four major conferences were devoted to economic issues, while others focused on the history of Ukrainian book printing, Ottoman Turkish sources for the history of Ukraine and the Black Sea region, and the Ukrainian experience in the United States. More recent conferences (1996 and 1997) commemorated the fifth anniversary of Ukrainian independence. In November 1998 HURI held a two-day conference of emerging Ukrainian-American writers. In April 1999, a conference entitled The Belarus Factor: Implications for Russia, East-Central Europe and the West, funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation and sponsored jointly by HURI and the Davis Center for Russian Studies, was held at Harvard University with scholars and diplomats from numerous countries. In March 2003, the first Petro Jacyk Symposium entitled "Diaspora and Homeland in the Transnational Age: the Case of Ukraine" explored the relationship between the Ukrainian diaspora and its homeland in today's context of frequent communication, travel, personal and organizational ties across national boundaries; in May 2003 the Bohdan Krawciw Memorial Symposium "Traditionalism and Experimentation: Aspects of Ukrainian Literature in the 1920s" discussed Ukrainian literary renaissance in the past and prospects for the future.


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