Cambridge Ukrainian Studies Podcast

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).

Particularly since the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as regional governor in May 2015, the Black Sea port of Odessa has become an epicentre of Ukraine’s campaign for political and economic reform. In this public lecture, Professor Volodymyr Dubovyk (Director of the Centre for International Studies, I. Mechnikov National University, Odessa, Ukraine) positions Odessa as a prism through which to analyse Ukraine’s experience of revolution and war and its ongoing struggle with corruption.

In this podcast Professor Timothy Snyder (Yale) considers the politicized history and the historicised politics related to Russia's war in Ukraine, with special attention to the the enduring legacy of the Holocaust and the Kremlin's rehabilitation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He also previews his forthcoming book Black Earth, which will be published by Bodley Head in September 2015. His presentation, entitled 'The Fog of History: From the Great Fatherland War to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine', was delivered in King's College, Cambridge on 27 February 2015. Professor Snyder is introduced by Dr Rory Finnin, Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge.

In this podcast, three scholars discuss the relationship between academic knowledge of Ukraine and state propaganda about Ukraine in Germany, France and Russia, respectively. The presentations were a part of the conference 'Ukraine and the Global Information War' organized by Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, an academic centre in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. Andriy Portnov, Tetyana Ogarkova, and Tanya Zaharchenko participate. Rachel Polonsky chairs the session, which took place on 31 October 2014 at King's College, Cambridge.