KIU Guest Lecturers

Nataliia Steblyna is a Ukrainian media researcher at Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University. She is the acting head of Journalism and Social Communications Department and the guarantor of the educational program “Political Journalism”. Her research interests are transformation of news in the digital times, modern political communication and computer assisted analysis of media texts. As a media analyst she cooperates with Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy and several Ukrainian media, covering the problems of Ukrainian regional media during the full-scale invasion, Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns, journalism education etc.

In summer semester 2025 Nataliia was teaching 3 seminar courses at the European University Viadrina:

• Digital instruments for media and political analysis
• Hacking and Restoring the Truth (Modern Russian propaganda studies)
• Media. War. Digitalization

´I am hoping for creativy and curiosity´- Dr Nataliia Steblyna teaches at the first KIU guest professor:

What German and Ukrainian universities can learn from each other: observations of a journalism

KIU guest professor Nataliia Steblyna was named one of the 100 most important and influential scientists in Berlin

Oleh Nivievskyi is a Professor of Economics at the Kyiv School of Economics and a founder of the Center for Food and Land Use Research at KSE. Oleh holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and Applied Statistics from University of Göttingen with more than 20 years of experience in agri-food markets and policy. Oleh is also interested in a political economy and performance of local governance in Ukraine, EU integration, conflicts’ impact and post-war rebuilding and recovery, as well as in transport services pricing and policy.

In 2025/26 winter semester Oleh will be teaching 3 seminar courses at the European University Viadrina:

• Food security, agricultural markets and policy
• Transportation markets and infrastructure
• War Research Laboratory

Oksana Mikheieva is Professor of Sociology at the Kyiv School of Econom­ics. During her work at various academic institutions, including Donetsk State University of Management, Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv), and European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), as well as during research fellowships at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (HURI), Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), ZOiS/the Centre for East European and International Studies, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin she researched vari­ous aspects of migration processes related to war and forced displacement. Additionally, she serves on the editorial board of peer- review journals ‘Ukraina moderna’, ‘City: History, Culture, Society’, and ‘East’ (‘Skhid’). Her research focuses on aspects of paramilitary motivations, everyday life under conditions of war and occupation.

In Summer Semester 2026 she is teaching 2 courses at European University Viadrina:

• War, occupation and borders: daily lives under occupation and the violence of territorial demarcation (Wednesday, 11 am to 1 pm, European University Viadrina, Gräfin Dönhoff Building, GD 201)
• ‘Ordinary’ totalitarianism: the phenomenon of the Soviet system and its consequences (Thursday, 11 am to 1 pm, European University Viadrina, Gräfin Dönhoff Building, GD 206)

The courses are available on viaCampus under the section ‘Courses’ via the following link.

Olga Tsuprykova is a Ukrainian cultural heritage professional and civic leader with more than fifteen years of professional and civic experience working at the intersection of community engagement, cultural heritage, international cooperation, and conflict recovery in Ukraine and internationally.

A native of Donetsk and a person of North Azovian Greek (Roumean) descent, she is the co-founder and head of the “North Azovian Greeks: Urums and Roumeans” NGO. The organization brings together members of the North Azovian Greek community, language activists, and supporters of the community’s cultural heritage. It works to preserve and promote the cultural heritage and two endangered languages of the North Azovian Greeks, Urum and Roumean, through educational initiatives, community engagement, and international cooperation.

Between 2020 and 2022, Olga lived and worked in Mariupol. Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, she co-founded a grassroots volunteer initiative supporting North Azovian Greeks affected by war and displacement. This initiative later evolved into the NGO she currently leads.

At the European University Viadrina, Olga teaches the block seminar ‘Exploring the North Azovian Greeks in Ukraine: A Practitioner and Community-Rooted Perspective on Languages, Identity, and War’ as part of a short-term lectureship at KIU. Her work at Viadrina brings community-based and practitioner perspectives into discussions on cultural heritage, minority identities, heritage language revitalization, collective memory, and the consequences of war and displacement for local communities.

Olga is a graduate of the Department of International Relations and European Studies at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece, and holds a BA and MA in Investment Project Financing from Kyiv National Economic University, Ukraine. She speaks Ukrainian, English, and Modern Greek, reads Spanish, French, and Italian, and is continuing to learn Roumean and Urum, the two languages of North Azovian Greeks.