Volodymyr Kravchenko

Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

February - May 2026

Supported by HURI with the Ihor and Oksana Humeniuk Ukrainian Fund and the Alex Woskob Family Foundation Endowment Fund

Research Project

Post-Soviet Historical Writing of Ukraine in North America since 1991

This project is a continuation of Dr. Kravchenko’s recent book, Ukrainian Historical Writing in North America during the Cold War (Lexington Books, 2023). More than thirty years of post-Soviet transformation, institutional and methodological changes, and dramatic (geo)political events, create sufficient historical distance for the re-assessment of the state of the disciplines “responsible” for the production and dissemination of expert knowledge on the eastern edge of Europe, whose very name, geopolitical configuration and identity is a subject of endless discussions, especially in light of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The project is situated within the sub-fields of intellectual history and the history of historical writing. It also touches upon issues related to post-Soviet transition, policy of memory, transfer of knowledge, as well as discourses of national and imperial identities. In a broader perspective, this project is part of and a continuation of Dr. Kravchenko’s outline of Ukrainian historical writing, “Writing the Borderland.”

Biography

Volodymyr Kravchenko is a professor in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion, and a senior research fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada). He came to Canada from Kharkiv in 2012 after being elected Director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and Professor at the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta (Edmonton). Before that, he was a founding Chair of the Department of Ukrainian studies, Director of the Kowalsky Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and founding Editor-in-Chief of the East/West journal of Ukrainian studies at Vasyl’ Karazin Kharkiv National University. 

Dr. Kravchenko is the author of about 200 publications on modern Ukrainian history and historiography, including articles, book chapters, monographs, and edited collections. His fields of interest also include the history of East European, Russian, and Soviet studies. His recent publications include, Unpredictable Past Reshaping Russian, Ukrainian, and East European Studies, co-edited with Marko R. Stech (CIUS Press, 2024); Kharkov/Kharkiv: A Borderland Capital (Berghahn Books, 2023); Ukrainian Historical Writing in North America during the Cold War: The Struggle for Recognition (Lexington Books, 2023); and The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland: History versus Geography (McGill U Press, 2022).