Meet the HUSI Class of 2024
The 54th consecutive Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI) is in full swing! Accordingly, we are proud to announce the 2024 HUSI cohort. This eclectic group of students emerged from various disciplines, including film, political science, and law. Some are world travelers from countries such as Finland, Japan, China, and Austria. Despite their diverse backgrounds, they all opted to immerse themselves in Ukrainian studies at Cambridge this summer.
This year's program covers language, literature, history, and contemporary studies. The 2024 cohort has voiced enthusiasm about meeting their new instructors, attending public lectures, and meeting esteemed scholars. Through coursework, private events, and excursions, the students have already developed a camaraderie with one another. We hope that they will continue working towards their academic aspirations, and form memories, as the semester continues. Learn more about their interests, backgrounds, and goals through the bios below.
Madeleine Aber
Madeleine Aber is originally from Northampton, England, but has lived the last five years in Fife, Scotland. She graduated this summer from the University of St. Andrews with a Scottish MA (Hons) degree in Russian and Spanish. She has plans for postgraduate study in Ukrainian, which she believes HUSI will prepare her very well for! Her academic interest in Ukraine was sparked not by its presence, but by its absence, as her studies of Soviet literature and history as part of her degree were largely Russian-focused.
She began learning Ukrainian through her University’s evening language classes, finding a new joy, especially in the letter ї and the 1996 animated film Rukavychka. In her last semester, she was introduced to the works of repressed Ukrainian authors such as Mykola Kulish, Ostap Vyshnya, and Mykola Khvylovy. She first read many of Vyshnya’s usmishky and Kulish’s play Myna Mazailo, muddling through with her very basic Ukrainian. She felt uniquely captivated by the complex layers of humor, poignancy, and social commentary of these works, choosing to write her final essay on his 1926 collection Українізуємось! At this point she very much fell down the rabbit hole, finding Soviet Ukrainian humor and satire particularly interesting, especially as the ideas and attitudes Vyshnya pokes fun at a century ago are still relevant in our world today. She chose Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge in the hopes of being able to read Ukrainian literature such as that of Vyshnya with a deeper understanding of the language and cultural influences. Even with her basic Ukrainian, such work has had such a profound impact on her. She is most looking forward to, and happily anticipating, spending most of her time outside of class in Harvard’s libraries.
Daša Anosova
Daša Anosova is a contemporary art researcher-practitioner from Kyiv, Ukraine. Daša taught at the British Council Ukraine in 2016-2019, and at the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts in 2019-2020. She is a 2020 Chevening alumna; who graduated from King’s College London with an MA in Education in the Arts and Cultural Settings. She is now a PhD candidate at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Her research is focused on the operational strategies and aesthetic-political vocabulary developed by Ukrainian artist collectives after 2013. The focus of her research is practitioners working on the intersection of art, architecture, and activism. Daša is engaged in a number of art and cultural initiatives grounded in the Ukrainian context. Her recent projects include a digital archive of memories of people directly affected by the Russian war against Ukraine; “The Reconstruction of Ukraine: Ruination / Representation / Solidarity” symposium with its follow-up collection of texts published by E-flux Architecture, and Oberih publication project among others.
“At the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, I am taking two courses supported by the HUSI Scholarship: "Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine" with Dr. Emily Channell-Justice, and "Tradition and Modernity: Ukraine in the 19th and 20th Centuries" with Dr. Serhiy Bilenky. These courses will deepen my understanding of Ukraine's complex relationship between tradition and modernity within a broader imperial and transnational context. Additionally, they provide a framework for comprehending the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine. This enriched perspective will significantly inform and enhance my work in Ukrainian cultural studies and advocacy.”
Nathalie (Xiaoru) Cen
Nathalie (Xiaoru) Cen is a first-year student at UCL's School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), majoring in History, Politics, and Economics. Her academic interests include post-communist East European politics and societies, and the cultural history (especially art history) of the Soviet Union. Last year, she wrote an essay discussing the significance of the concept of time in the philosophy of Soviet Constructivist art. Currently, Nathalie is working on a dissertation analyzing how the legacies of the partitions of Poland continue to influence modern Polish electoral behavior.
In 2022, Nathalie's enthusiasm for Ukrainian history and culture was sparked by her favorite Ukrainian novelist, Mykola Hohol (Nikolai Gogol), and his masterpiece Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. In the future, she hopes to conduct further research on the formation of modern Ukrainian national identity and its confrontation with Russian chauvinism during the Russo-Ukrainian war. This summer at HUSI, Nathalie is taking Dr. Bilenky’s “Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine: 19th and 20th Centuries” and Dr. Channell-Justice’s “Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine.” Through these modules, she aims to develop a systematic understanding of the modern Ukrainian nation and how Ukrainians develop their identity amidst Sovietism, Russian imperialism, and European influences.
Nathalie plans to pursue a master's degree in East European/Russian politics and history after finishing the bachelor's program at SSEES. She is glad to meet new friends who share similar academic interests or have lived experiences in East European countries.
Augustus Gilchrist
Raised in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Augustus works as the Department Coordinator at Harvard’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and lives in Cambridge. Augustus graduated from Bowdoin College with a BA in Russian Literature & Culture, where he wrote a senior capstone project on cultural differences and corporeality in Aleksandr Pushkin’s Poltava. He has also completed coursework in the Ukrainian language at Arizona State University’s Critical Language Institute and in Yiddish at YIVO and Harvard. Before coming to Harvard, Augustus worked as a translator and researcher for The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, helping conduct documentary/archival research and interviews supporting Holocaust reparation claims.
Augustus is taking "Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine, 19th and 20th Centuries" at HUSI this summer, and is excited to take a course specifically devoted to Ukrainian history. Augustus is interested in cultural production in Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Russian in the Ukrainian SSR, especially in the late Soviet period, and hopes to gain important historical context for these interests from the course. Augustus also hopes to bring the new epistemic resources offered by engagement with Ukrainian history to his work as Department Coordinator.
Augustus is thrilled to be in a history classroom for the first time in a while, and looks forward to learning from both the instructor and the varied perspectives of his classmates!
Emily Hackett
Emily Hackett is a master’s candidate in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, at Harvard’s Davis Center. Having grown up between Vermont, USA, and Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic, Emily now researches cultural diplomacy in interwar Czechoslovakia. Her current project specifically focuses on Ukrainian student migration during this period.
To support her reading of Ukrainian writers and periodicals for her master’s thesis, Emily is taking Ukrainian For Reading Knowledge at HUSI. She is additionally looking forward to enriching her knowledge of Ukraine through her interactions with other HUSI scholars. Aside from her historical research, Emily’s interest in Ukraine stems from her four-month study abroad in Kyiv (fall 2021) and continued close contact with her host mother and sister, Nataliia and Darina.
Vincent Hoyer
Vincent is a PhD candidate at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig, Germany. During his MA in history at the University of Augsburg, he had the opportunity to attend Laney Graduate School at Emory University in Atlanta, supported by a one-year tuition scholarship. In his doctoral dissertation, he investigates urban entertainment culture and nationalism in fin-de-siècle Central Eastern Europe. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
In his dissertation, he wants to emphasize the Ukrainian-speaking public in Lviv. He is convinced that Dr. Volodymyr Dibrova’s “Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge” course at the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute provides him with the necessary knowledge and skills to conduct a hermeneutic analysis of Ukrainian texts. As a native German speaker with a command of Polish, Russian, and Yiddish, focusing on Ukrainian gives him the prerequisites to advance his research on Central Eastern Europe from complementary perspectives – an area in which Ukraine was and is a crucial player.
Furthermore, he wants to do justice to the language: “During previous tourist and archival visits to Ukraine, I needed to complement my basic Ukrainian with Polish and Russian words to converse, which often felt embarrassing. In future visits, but also with the many colleagues my institution welcomed since the Russian full-scale invasion, I want to be able to speak correct Ukrainian and use its command as a statement of support.”
Ernest Huk
Ernest, a Ukrainian junior social scientist, earned his BA in Sociology at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2014 and, since 2020, has pursued an MA in Sociology of Contemporary Societies at Charles University in Prague. During his study stays, he got interested in the subjects of open science at the University of Zurich, digital transformation at the University of Tartu, post-colonial theory at Heidelberg University, and queer studies at Charles University. Their intersection has developed into the thesis ‘We Were Here’: How the Ukrainian Queer Soldiers Advanced Their Recognition amid the Russian Invasion.
Ernest explained his reasons for choosing this challenging topic in a chapter Emancipation of Ernie, in an anthology Queer Ukraine published by Renard Press. Academically, Decolonizing Queer Experience, edited and featuring a piece by Dr Emily Channell-Justice, has been an enormous inspiration. That is why he couldn’t miss an opportunity to learn more from her in person at HUSI during a course, Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine. Ernest also looks forward to discovering more about Ukrainian scholarship at Harvard in Dr. Serhiy Bilenky’s Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine class and making new friends among his outstanding peers.
Charles Jessup
Charles Jessup graduated summa cum laude from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a Bachelor of Science in political science and business management. In the fall of 2024, he will begin law school at the University of Illinois, to become a lawyer seeking justice for Ukrainians who have suffered from Russian war crimes.
His academic and now personal interest in Ukraine stems from courses taken at SIUE taught by professor Dr. Sophia Wilson, who has also taught at HUSI. Seeing how the war affected the family and everyday life of a Ukrainian was something that had a lasting effect on him.
After taking courses about Eastern European history, the present political situation of Ukraine, and the horrors of the previous Soviet governance and treatment of Ukraine, Charles completed a senior thesis on how the American media coverage of the war in Ukraine changed from the initial invasion through the end of 2023.
He will be taking “Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine” by Dr. Channel-Justice. Through this class, he is eager to deeply explore how the Soviet legacy shaped what Ukraine is today- a home of active and revolutionary citizens endlessly seeking control of their future. He will also be taking “Tradition and Modernity: Ukraine in the 19th and 20th Centuries” by Dr. Bilenky, where he expects to gain essential knowledge surrounding Ukrainian cities, culture, art, and humanity, in a unique setting such as HURI. Charles is excited to soak up knowledge from peers and attend the various lecture series offered, as well as dive into studies and make connections to advance Ukrainian interests in the future.
Andrew Kowal
Andrew Kowal is a rising Junior at Loyola High School of Los Angeles. He has a passion for languages and cultures, which has led him to take part in the Intensive Elementary Ukrainian course. Andrew’s linguistic interest began in middle school with German, which he was able to practice and learn through a high school trip to Germany. He also grew his high school Mandarin knowledge by participating in an exchange program in Taiwan
This summer, Andrew is excited to start his Ukrainian studies. He is taking this language course to visit Ukraine and communicate with his family there. Aside from coursework, Andrew is taking this course to connect with fellow students about a shared interest in Slavic studies, and comparing things such as previous knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian and how history and culture differentiates the two.
Andrew chiefly looks forward to the communication aspect of the class. As the course is communication-based, he is excited to be able to speak well, and hopefully have the knowledge required to visit Ukraine and utilize all of his studies. Overall, Andrew is interested in Ukraine for many reasons. He has always found the history and culture fascinating, especially under Russian influence and oppression. He also has a lot of family in Ukraine, which means he has been interested in Ukraine from a very young age.
Aubrey Lay
Aubrey Lay (he/him) is currently carrying out a Fulbright English Teaching Grant in Tallinn, Estonia (September 2023-June 2025). He is enrolled in Intensive Elementary Ukrainian for the summer term. In Tallinn, his primary teaching placement is at Vabaduse Kool/Школа свободи, the bilingual Ukrainian Freedom School founded in 2022, where he works in English classes and runs conversation clubs for students and staff of all backgrounds and language levels. Aubrey also teaches at the Tallinn Ukrainian Cultural Center, the Tallinn American Corner, and Tõnismäe Riigigümnaasium. In addition, he works with local LGBTQI community organizations in Estonia and the Baltic region to advance intersex awareness.
Aubrey holds a BA in Linguistics and Political Science from William & Mary. His work with Ukraine began in 2021, when he interned with QUA - LGBTQ Ukrainians in America, researching anti-LGBTQI Russian disinformation in Ukraine. Following Russia's full-scale invasion, QUA's work pivoted to mutual aid and assistance for displaced members of the Ukrainian LGBTQI community. In 2022, he joined the Exodus Project, a William & Mary-based student research group, where he spearheaded, and continues to work with, an ongoing research project focusing on LGBTQI inclusion in the humanitarian response to the current displacement crisis. Through Summer Institute language coursework, he looks forward to developing better communicative competence to enrich his teaching and research work. He is also excited to learn more about Ukrainian history and culture from weekly lectures and meeting other members of the summer cohort.
Anastasia Leshchyshyn
Anastasia Leshchyshyn is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. She holds an MA in European and Russian Affairs (Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto) and a BA in History, Political Science, and Classical Civilization (University of Toronto). Her research interests include minority rights, memory politics, and judicial politics.
Her decision to pursue a PhD in comparative politics was sparked by a fascination with the insights that the study of Ukraine could contribute to research into worldwide political phenomena and related concepts and theories in the social sciences. After completing graduate coursework with a broad regional focus on Europe, the European Union, and Canada, she looks forward to engaging with a community of interdisciplinary scholars at HUSI who share an interest in Ukraine. Immersion in the HUSI community will be especially helpful as she develops her dissertation, which will involve a comparative study of minority language legislation in Ukraine and Canada, two countries where language policy has long stood as a salient – if not fraught – issue in public and political discourse. Anastasia is thus especially interested in issues of language, nation-building, and ethnic and national identification that promise to be addressed in the courses offered by Dr. Channell-Justice and Dr. Bilenky.
While at HUSI, Anastasia also intends to evolve her paper on the role of memory politics in Russia’s war in Ukraine, for which she was awarded the Lyubomyr Hajda Graduate Student Paper Prize by the American Association for Ukrainian Studies (AAUS) in 2023.
Katie Livingstone
Katie Livingstone is a freelance journalist who has been covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since 2022. She has reported from inside Ukraine since day one of the full-scale invasion, covering deeply personal stories about the experiences of war along with expensive foreign policy topics that affect the global political landscape. Her work has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and appeared in Foreign Policy, Rolling Stone, Business Insider, Military.com, and other publications. Less than a year before heading to Ukraine, Katie completed her MSJ from Medill’s Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs program in Washington DC while covering the tumultuous 2020 presidential election.
This summer, she joined HUSI’s Intensive Elementary Ukrainian course to bring her reporting in Ukraine to a more intimate level. Her experiences covering the war have been unforgettable — thanks to the inspirational people she has had the honor of interviewing during extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Katie is learning Ukrainian to better comprehend the priceless anecdotes she collects, relate with her neighbors, and hopefully stay a little safer along the way.
Before joining the Fourth Estate, Katie lived and worked in several countries while focusing on human rights issues and development. She first earned her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in Political Science and Italian Studies before moving to Italy to teach English. Later, she received an MA from Central European University in Gender Studies — before the degree was banned in Hungary and CEU was kicked out of the country. Her experiences led her to seek a greater understanding of Eastern Europe, where she soon moved full-time. In 2014, Katie became a Fulbright Fellow in Albania for her proposal to use social theater to promote gender equality education and initiatives.
When Katie’s not exploring fascinating places, she can often be found kayaking in her home state of Florida. She looks forward to introducing the sound of Ukrainian to the Suwanee River.
Arthur McFarlane
Arthur is a DPhil (PhD) Student at St Antony’s College, Oxford. His research explores how peasants’ avenues for resistance to Soviet rule were contingent on geopolitical and environmental factors, and how resistance led to changes in secret police tactics that consolidated Soviet power in the borderlands. He brings this historical perspective to the analysis of current affairs in his capacity as a Research Assistant at the Ditchley Foundation. He also holds an MA with Distinction from UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He has also won scholarships and grants from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, and the Stahl Research Fund.
He became interested in Ukraine through studying Soviet history and will be taking the ‘Ukrainian for reading knowledge’ course to assist his historical research.
Sofia Melnychuck
Sofia Melnychuck is a rising junior at Harvard College pursuing a double major in Applied Math, with a focus in AI, and Slavic Literature & Languages. Her history research involves using quantitative and mixed methods to study cultural acts of resistance against the Soviet Union, with a focus in music and iconography in the Baltic states and Ukraine. She has extended this regional focus towards projects investigating Russia’s AI-generated misinformation about the war in Ukraine and the use of AI to mobilize disability communities in Ukraine. She is grateful to to begin her formal studies through HUSI’s intensive elementary Ukrainian course, in which she is most looking forward to connecting with and building relationships with the Ukrainian studies community at Harvard. Her lifelong commitment to Ukrainian studies is born out of her close-relationship with her Ukrainian heritage.
Malgorzata (Margot) Morajka
Margot (Malgorzata) is originally from Poland. She graduated from the Cracow University of Economics with a master’s in international relations. Her professional life, however, has been based in the US. She has worked in finance for many years, mostly at Goldman Sachs in Boston. This summer, Margot is considering reorienting her professional focus. Specifically, Margot is interested in figuring out how she might work to strengthen the relationship between Ukraine and Poland, particularly as Ukraine fights not only for its people, culture, and sovereignty but also for the preservation of a liberal Europe.
Margot is taking "Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine, 19th and 20th Centuries.” She appreciates the course’s focus on Ukrainian cities and is interested in how nationalism developed and is defined in the Ukrainian and Polish contexts.
Outside of class, Margot anticipates enjoying the rich cultural life north of the Charles.
Tamako Okano
Tamako is a Japanese civil servant working for the Japanese Ministry of Defense. She holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Tokyo and will pursue a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School starting this fall.
At HUSI, Tamako will take Professor Dibrova’s “Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge.” Through the course, her goals are to gain a better understanding of the situation in Ukraine and its implications for the security of the Indo-Pacific region. She looks forward to learning with and from her fellow classmates and exploring the Boston area.
Anthony Richter
Anthony Richter is director of Special Initiatives at the Open Society Foundations which he joined in 1988. He established 20 foundations in the Open Society Foundations network throughout Eurasia, the Middle East, and South Asia. He also has developed numerous programs such as the Central Eurasia Project, EurasiaNet.org, the Natural Resources Governance Institute, and significant cultural initiatives including the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture.
Anthony served as chairman of the Natural Resources Governance Institute and on the boards of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Open Government Partnership. Recently he helped design, launch, and run OSF’s Ukraine Democracy Fund, a large-scale effort addressing critical issues facing Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Anthony received his BA from Wesleyan University in Russian language and literature and a graduate degree in Slavic languages and literature from Columbia University. His language study includes Arabic, French, Persian, and Russian.
Anthony’s interest in Ukraine stems from an engagement with the country’s development predating independence, stretching back 30 years as well as a longstanding but newly-revitalized connection to his family in Ukraine that he rather remarkably re-discovered over the past two years.
This summer he is on leave from work and studying Ukrainian intensively to deepen his knowledge of Ukrainian society and culture and to strengthen his connection to his Ukrainian heritage. He hopes to develop connections with HURI and related Harvard institutions, learn from fellow students, and learn about research resources for a future writing project.
Sierra Salazar
Coming from Finland, Sierra is currently a master's student specializing in Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies, with a minor in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Originally from Tonganoxie, Kansas, Sierra’s academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Kansas State University which she received in 2023. There, she focused on Eastern Europe and Eurasia, researching territorial perceptions and identities across Tuva, Sakha, Buryatia, and Kalmykia. In 2022, Sierra studied abroad at Charles University in the Czech Republic, where she later moved in 2023 to teach English as a foreign language.
Sierra’s academic interests encompass the politics of memory, territorialization, nation-building, and nationalism. Her curiosity towards Ukraine began with an interest from early childhood in Ivana Kupala and vyshyvankas, later evolving into an academic pursuit of Ukrainian society and politics during her bachelor’s at Kansas State University.
This summer, she is enrolled in two courses at HUSI: “Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine” and “Tradition and Modernity: Ukraine in the 19th and 20th Centuries.” She is excited to further analyze Ukraine’s political culture regarding civic action, and delve into urban history to expand and challenge her knowledge of Ukraine. Sierra chose HUSI to immerse herself in a rigorous study of Ukrainian society and politics, particularly in preparation for her master’s thesis on civic nationalism in Ukraine.
Beyond coursework, Sierra eagerly anticipates the lecture series and meeting with scholars in the field. She also looks forward to connecting with colleagues who share her passions. She hopes to partake in cultural exchanges outside of lectures, particularly through cooking and sharing recipes (including her L’viv cheesecake).
Colton R. Smith
Colton R. Smith is the senior liaison and fundraising manager for Help People NGO, a Ukrainian nonprofit humanitarian organization specializing in frontline evacuation and distributing humanitarian aid within Ukraine. Colton passionately studied European history for his bachelor’s degree program at UC Santa Cruz. When the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, he quit his job in California, traveled to Poland and initially volunteered to help distribute humanitarian aid from abroad into Ukraine. This life-altering mission led him far deeper into Ukrainian studies than he could ever have anticipated, and more than two years later, he is now pursuing a future career working in the United States State Department to do his part to help guide the foreign policy of the United States vis-àvis Eastern Europe.
Colton is a proud HUSI 2023 alumnus, where he studied Ukrainian history and Ukrainian anthropology/geopolitics. Colton’s journey at Harvard was yet another course-altering experience that helped guide him significantly further in his journey to achieve his career goals. His Ukrainian-speaking humanitarian organization has graciously spoken English with him to collaborate in their tireless work for the Ukrainian people. Now he wants to return the favor by learning the language of the nation he has come to love so much. He hopes that by becoming well-versed in the Ukrainian language, he will be able to communicate with his colleagues more effectively and achieve even greater results for Ukraine. Filled with anticipation, he has officially returned for HUSI 2024 to study the Ukrainian language with Professor Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed. He hopes that in this summer session, he will cement an enduring foundation of Ukrainian language comprehension and an understanding that will guide him in the near-limitless future of further academic exploration and edification.
Hannah Steckelberg
Hannah is from Vienna, Austria, where she studied Interdisciplinary East European Studies, with a focus on Ukrainian History of the early 20th century. She graduated with a Master of Arts in spring, having written her thesis about Ukrainian publishing in the Interwar period. Later this year, she will begin her PhD about violence in urban-rural relations during the Russian Civil War in Southern Ukraine at the University of Vienna. She’s also a member of the “History of National Diversity” research group and is very interested in the lives of national minorities during the Civil War. During her studies, she lived in Austria, Germany, Poland, and Russia, and traveled to Ukraine multiple times before the full-scale invasion.
Taking Serhiy Bilenky’s class “Tradition and Modernity”, Hannah is hoping to advance her knowledge about Ukrainian cities and urban areas, their economies and population, and their relationship to the countryside. Meanwhile, the class "Ukraine in the World” with Emily Channell-Justice will help her gain more expertise on current affairs in Ukraine, geopolitical relationships, and socioeconomic developments. Hannah is especially excited to connect with other students interested in East European history and to improve her understanding of Ukraine in discussions with instructors, guest lecturers, and fellow students. HUSI offers her the unique opportunity to learn about Ukraine from both an American and a Ukrainian perspective.
Mykolaj Suchy
Mykolaj Suchy is excited to develop his Ukrainian language skills in Professor Dibrova’s Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge course this summer.
Mykolaj works as a consultant in Deloitte’s Government and Public Sector Practice and has experience advising federal and state agencies in change and risk management, compliance, expansion and sustainability, and transparency.
Before joining Deloitte Mykolaj earned a BA in history and global affairs at Yale University. As a student Mykolaj explored eastern European history through personal narrative and family experience. He is excited to return to the classroom and to learn from and collaborate with peers.
Mykolaj hopes to use his professional experience and growing language skills to contribute to Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Lucien Turczan-Lipets
Lucien Turczan-Lipets is a junior researcher at the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany working with a small group of scholars from Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Germany on a European Research Council-funded project about the concepts of ‘Legality’ and ‘Justice’ in the struggles of national, religious, and ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and Russian empire.
After growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota in a Ukrainian Catholic and Jewish family and hearing Ukrainian spoken at home, Lucien finished the last two years of high school in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, sparking a broader interest in the region of Eastern and Central Europe. He received his bachelor’s in Comparative Literature (with English, French, and Russian languages) and Slavic Studies from Brown University in 2021, and completed a master’s in Global History at the Freie Universität, Berlin in April 2024. He is particularly interested in intellectual history, Jewish history and literature, and environmental history.
At the HUSI, Lucien will be taking Professor Dibrova’s “Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge” course. He wanted to take this course to continue rooting his study of Ukrainian in a social and intellectual context of Ukrainian studies scholars from around the world who are committed to building a transnational community rooted in justice, for Ukrainians, and also for all others living in the region and its diasporas. He looks forward to learning from other students in conversations inside and outside the classroom. Later in the summer, he will also take a Yiddish language course back in Berlin, complementing Ukrainian with another language integral to the history of Ukraine.
Olesia Tymoshenko
Olesia Tymoshenko is currently a second-year student in the MFA Film program at Stony Brook University, where she is double majoring in writing and film directing. She has been honored with a scholarship for talented filmmakers at Stony Brook. Before this, she earned both her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Theatre Arts from Kyiv National Theatre University, named after Ivan Karpenko-Karyi. Her first comedy short film, All Things Bohemian, was presented at Lincoln Center and is now being showcased at various film festivals. Presently, she is working on her second short film, Philosophy, Ukrainian Theater, Love, Death, and Les Kurbas, which has received support from the Vovchuk Scholarship Foundation and the National Board of Review Student Grant Committee.
At the end of 2022, she published her first children's book, The Adventures of Bubchuk and Bubasya, in Ukraine, which is available on Amazon. Additionally, in 2022, she launched a podcast focusing on children's literature for adults, accessible on all streaming platforms.
This summer, she is enrolled in two courses: "Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine, 19th and 20th Centuries” with Dr. Serhiy Bilenky, and “Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine” with Dr. Emily Channell-Justice.
Olesia chose to attend HUSI and specifically selected these courses because, as a native Ukrainian, she is deeply committed to expanding her knowledge of Ukrainian history and the Current Political Situation. These courses provide a unique opportunity to delve into Ukraine's rich cultural heritage and contemporary issues, equipping her with new perspectives and tools to represent Ukraine in the academic arena. Aside from coursework, she looks forward to engaging with like-minded individuals passionate about Ukrainian studies.
Marcus Wong
Marcus has extensive experience in board governance and public policy across Canada. He served on the West Vancouver City Council from 2018 to 2022, and immediately before his term on Council, he was appointed by British Columbia's Attorney General to serve on the West Vancouver Police Board to provide civilian oversight of public safety. During his time on the police board, West Vancouver experienced some of its lowest crime levels in the last 25 years.
Marcus also gained valuable experience in diplomacy and relationship-building while working for the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C., helping to strengthen relationships with members of the International Olympic Committee, the World Olympians Association, Olympians Canada, and both houses of the United States Congress. Additionally, he has been the corporate media spokesperson for a major utility company, has overseen government relations and federal/provincial lobbying for the entire British Columbia dairy industry, and served as a communications advisor to several provincial cabinet ministers.
As a Board member of the NATO Association of Canada and co-chair of its new Vancouver Branch, Marcus strongly believes in the importance of effective multilateral relations, especially given contemporary geopolitical uncertainty. He is taking "Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine, 19th and 20th Centuries” with Dr. Serhiy Bilenky, where he is particularly interested in the public policy ramifications of NATO’s rapidly evolving relationship with Ukraine and other world powers.
Shudi Yang
Shudi Yang is an undergraduate student from Fudan University (Shanghai, China), majoring in Slavic language and literature. Her early research revolved around F. M. Dostoevsky's fictional writings, but she received much of her academic training from the Department of History and Philosophy as well. Her first encounter with Ukrainian Studies took place in her sophomore year when she read Povest’ Vremennykh Let, the twelfth-century chronicle composed in the Kyivan Cave Monastery. The fascinating history of Kyivan Rus has captivated her ever since, in particular the reign of Princess Olga of Kyiv, which will be the topic of her undergraduate thesis.
This summer, Shudi will be taking “Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine” by Dr. Emily Channell-Justice and “Tradition and Modernity: Ukraine in the 19th and 20th Centuries” by Dr. Serhiy Bilenky, to better understand Ukraine beyond the scope of its pre-modern past. She looks forward to exploring Ukrainian indigenous feminist movements with Dr. Channell-Justice, and to acquiring a comprehensive understanding of Ukraine’s modern transformation in Dr. Bilenky’s course, focusing on the identity struggles of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens.
For Shudi, studying at HUSI is an attempt to step outside her current academic circle, where the remarkable multiplicity within the Slavic world is relatively overlooked, due to the lack of researchers working in this field. She also wishes to take this chance to learn more about the homeland of her language instructor Natalia, whose encouragement is vital to all of her academic pursuits.