Research Fellows Summer Term 2026

Veronica Botticelli is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Milan, Italy. She holds a PhD in Public International Law from the University of Padua (2024), where her dissertation examined inter-State complaints in international human rights law. Her research focuses on international human rights law, international adjudication, and accountability for serious violations. She has teaching experience in public international law and has published in leading international law journals. She currently serves as Co-Convenor of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on Courts and Tribunals and is a member of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Urbanisation and International Law.

KIU research project: ‘Reconfiguring the Legal Protection of Minority Identity in Occupied Ukraine: Challenges and Prospects of Adjudicating Indirect Discrimination before International Courts’

This project examines how international courts and tribunals address indirect discrimination against minorities in occupied Ukraine, where repression operates through ostensibly neutral measures affecting language, education, and cultural life. It compares the European Court of Human Rights’ contextual, effects-based approach with the International Court of Justice’s stricter, intent-oriented interpretation under the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Focusing on evidentiary standards, burdens of proof, and the legal construction of minority identity, the research highlights how judicial methodologies shape the recognition of structural harm. It argues for a more nuanced approach capable of capturing cumulative and indirect forms of discrimination, thus strengthening the protection of minority identity and belonging in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Research interests:

• international courts, tribunals, and quasi-judicial bodies
• international human rights law
• the law of State responsibility

Fiona Greenland is associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, and co-director of the Cultural Resilience Informatics and Analysis Lab (CURIA). A certified OSINT investigator, she documents culture-based atrocities with government and NGO groups in Ukraine and the EU. She is writing a book about linguicide and cultural resistance in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has interviewed 75 writers, translators, publishers, and artists across Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. Greenland is a research affiliate with INDEX-Ukraine, and in 2025-26 was a Research Fellow with the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultural Practices of Reparation at the University of Saarlands.

KIU research project: ‘Minority Communities in the Southern Frontline: Displacement, War, and Identity, 2000 to 2025’

This research project examines the historically layered minority identities of southern Ukraine, with a particular focus on the frontline regions of Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson oblasts. These regions have long functioned as contact zones shaped by migration, imperial governance, linguistic diversity, religious pluralism, and overlapping national affiliations. The project documents the war experiences and longer-term collective memories of ethnic Bulgarians, Gagauz, Crimean Tatars, Jews, Roma, Greeks, Moldovans, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians—whose perspectives illuminate the complex relationship between diversity, belonging, and political power in Ukraine.

Research interests:

• sociology of culture
• human rights
• nationalism and identity

Vladyslav Ivatskyi is a historian specializing in minority studies and identity transformations in the Northern Azov region. He received his PhD in History from Mykolaiv V. O. Sukhomlynsky National University (2016) with research on the historical development of the Greek communities of the Azov Sea region. His work examines processes of nation-building, linguistic change, and minority policies from the Russian Empire to contemporary Ukraine. He also studies the economic history of the Azov region, including maritime trade, frontier colonization, the development of the Azov economic cluster, and the expansion of grain agriculture in the nineteenth century. In 2010 he was a research fellow at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens and later coordinated several projects in applied social research and community development in Mariupol (2015–2023).

KIU research project: ‘Post-Territorial Minorities? From Territorial Minority to Network Community: The Greeks of the Northern Azov Region after 2022’

This project investigates how war, occupation, and forced migration reshape minority communities whose historical territorial base has been disrupted. Focusing on the Greek communities of the Northern Azov region after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the research examines the effects of displacement and wartime mobility on community structures, collective identity, and institutional life. It explores how the Azov Greek community continues to function across dispersed locations and asks whether these transformations signal a shift from a territorially embedded minority toward a dispersed network community, potentially pointing to the emergence of post-territorial minorities in contemporary Europe.Vladyslav Ivatskyi is a historian specializing in minority studies and identity transformations of the Northern Azov region. His research focuses on the Greek communities of the Azov Sea area and examines processes of nation-building, linguistic change, and minority policies from the Russian Empire to contemporary Ukraine. He also works on the economic history of the Azov region, including the development of the Azov economic cluster, maritime trade, frontier colonization, and the expansion of grain agriculture in the nineteenth century. His current research explores how the Azov Greek community continues to function across dispersed locations and asks whether these transformations signal a shift from a territorially embedded minority toward a dispersed network community, potentially pointing to the emergence of post-territorial minorities in contemporary Europe.

Research interests:

• minority studies and identity transformations in Eastern Europe

• economic and social history of the northern Azov region and the Black Sea frontier

• war, forced migration, and post-territorial minority communities

Georgiy Kasianov is the Head of the Laboratory of International Memory Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland. Until 2021, he served as the Head of the Department of Contemporary History and Politics at the Institute of the History of Ukraine, Kyiv. His academic career includes research and teaching appointments in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan, Finland, Italy, and Switzerland. Kasianov is the author, co-author, and co-editor of more than 20 books and two hundred articles on Ukrainian history from the 19th to the 21st centuries, the history of ideas, social history, and the politics of memory.

KIU research project: ‘National Minorities, the ‘Nationalizing State’ and Neighbors: Ukraine, 1990s– 2020s’

The research project is devoted to the study of Ukraine’s politics in the field of national relations and national minorities since independence. It focuses on the language and culture issues, considered through the prism of interests and actions of the major political actors, both domestic and international, legislation, and interaction between national groups and the state.

Research interests:

• contemporary history of Ukraine
• identity politics
• international relations

Ondřej Klípa, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Charles University’s Institute of International Studies (Department of Russian and East European Studies) specializing in migration, nationalism, and state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. He has held several fellowships, including a Fulbright-Masaryk Scholarship. His research, recognized by the Jacques Derrida Best Article Award, was published in journals such as Slavic Review and the Journal of Contemporary History. Beyond academia, Klípa has extensive experience in the Czech NGO sector and government advisory roles, notably serving as the Head of Secretariat for the Government Council for National Minorities and for Roma Minority Affairs.

KIU research project: ‘‘Imperial multiculturalism’ in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (1992-2013): Russian hegemony, Soviet legacy, and Western minority protection’

My research project examines ‘imperial multiculturalism’ in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (1992–2013) to understand how Russian authorities constructed hegemony through ‘ethnic management’. It argues that a regional ‘multicultural’ identity, promoted by local authorities and ethnic-Russian NGOs, was deliberately cultivated to dilute Crimean Tatar claims as an indigenous nation. Influenced by Soviet legacies and modern Russian policy, this strategy paradoxically utilized Western minority protection norms to gain international endorsement. Through document analysis, the project aims to reveal how narratives of ‘tolerance’ and ‘multiculturalism’ masked political marginalization, offering critical insights also into post-2014 developments.

Research interests:

• migration and nationalism
• state socialism
• Central and Eastern Europe

Katalin Kovály (Kolozsvári) is a research fellow at the HUN-REN Geographical Institute (RCAES), Budapest, and an assistant professor at Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian University in Berehove/Beregszász, Ukraine. She earned her PhD from ELTE University in Budapest in 2021. Her international academic background includes visiting fellowships at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv) and Charles University (Prague). Her research focuses on the ethnic and economic geography of Ukraine and Transcarpathia, specifically the Hungarian minority and transnational processes within the Ukrainian–Hungarian border region. She also investigates ethnic social capital within CEE countries.

KIU research project: ‘Social Dynamics of the Transcarpathian Hungarian Minority in Wartime Ukraine’

This research investigates the profound socio-demographic transformation of Transcarpathia, Ukraine’s westernmost county, following Russia’s 2022 invasion. Focusing on the Hungarian ethnic community, it analyses the dual impact of extensive ethnic Hungarian emigration and the massive influx of IDPs. Adopting a social geographical approach, the project explores how geopolitical crises reshape minority identities and local social structures. By applying theories of "othering" and regional identity, it examines whether these shifts foster social fragmentation or new forms of territorial solidarity, providing a critical examination of understanding social restructuring and minority resilience in war-torn contexts.

Research interests:

• migration studies
• transnationalism; transnational processes in the Hungarian-Ukrainian border region
• Hungarian minority in Ukraine
• social and economic geography of Transcarpathia
• ethnic social capital

Janush Panchenko is a Romani ethnographer from Ukraine and research associate at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on traditional culture, dialects, and nomadic lifestyles of Romani groups in Ukraine, as well as the impact of war on Romanipe – the traditional Romani value system. He is the founder of Romano Than, Ukraine's first Romani youth center, and co-founder of the Ukrainian Center for Romani Studies. He heads the working group on Romani language codification under Ukraine's State Service for Ethnic Policy. In 2023, he received the Ronald Lee Award for Romani language preservation.

KIU research project: ‘Military Service and the Transformation of Romanipe: Mechanisms of Change in the Traditional Value System of Ukrainian Roma During War’

This project explores how military service changes Romanipe – the traditional value system that governs everyday life, family roles, and identity among Roma. Military service has historically been seen as incompatible with Roma values, viewed as a "non-Roma affair." Yet since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, a significant number of Ukrainian Roma have joined the armed forces. Through in-depth interviews with Roma servicemen and focus groups with civilian Roma from multiple subethnic groups, the study traces how war participation reshapes attitudes toward the army, transforms community norms, and challenges established notions of Roma identity.

Research interests:

• ethnography of Romani communities in Ukraine: nomadism, traditional lifeways, customary institutions, and the question of indigenous recognition
• Romani sociolinguistics: documentation and codification of the Vlaxurya and Servurya dialects
• war and Roma society: forced displacement, diaspora adaptation, military participation, and the transformation of Romanipe

Dr. Orest Semotiuk is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies (Warsaw), holding a PhD in Political Science. With over 20 years of experience, his research focuses on political humour, digital visual culture, and mediatization of armed conflicts. From 01.04.2023 to 31.03.2025, he served as the Principal Investigator for the project ‘Laughter during the war: Russian aggression in Ukraine in political cartoons and memes’, co-funded by the National Science Centre and the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant. As certified MAXQDA Professional Trainer, he specializes in mixed-methods research. He is a member of the International Society for Humour Studies.

KIU research project: ‘Acclaiming 'Us', Attacking 'Them', Defending Identity’

The research project explores the strategic ‘weaponization’ of visual humour in the Russian-Ukrainian War. Using a mixed-methods approach (computer-assisted content analysis and multimodal discourse analysis), it compares conventional political humour (cartoons) with unconventional one (memes and AI-generated videos) across two conflict phases: 2014 – 2016 and 2022 – 2025. By applying Benoit’s functional theory, the study analyses how these genres employ rhetorical strategies (acclaiming, attacking, and defending) to construct national identities and represent minority groups, such as Crimean Tatars, within digital wartime discourse. This study further examines how technological transformations reshape identity representation.

Research interests:

• visual political humour
• imagefare
• mediatization of armed conflicts

Svitlana Telukha  PhD in History, lecturer at the National Technical University ‘Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute’ (Kharkiv, Ukraine). Her research focuses on oral history, social history, trauma studies, and memory cultures in Eastern Europe, with particular attention to Ukraine. Her work combines approaches from oral history, memory studies, and the history of everyday life to explore how people construct meaning, resilience, and identity under conditions of violence, displacement, and uncertainty. She has conducted several hundred oral history interviews with witnesses of World War II, Holocaust survivors, witnesses of the Chernobyl catastrophe, and civilians affected by the current war in Ukraine. Her research also engages with digital humanities and experimental forms of presenting historical testimony, including mapping projects and graphic narratives based on oral history interviews.

KIU research project: ‘Jewish Refugees from Ukraine in Germany: Memory, Identity, and the Recurrent Experience of Forced Migration’

This project examines the experiences of Jewish refugees from Ukraine who survived the Holocaust and were forced to leave their homes once again following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Many of these individuals belong to the most vulnerable groups among contemporary refugees, as their life histories combine the experience of genocide, long-term traumatic memory, advanced age, and repeated forced displacement.

The project investigates how individual and collective identities transform under the conditions of a recurring existential crisis. It explores how the war of 2022 has not only triggered a new wave of forced migration but has also reactivated memories of the Holocaust, shaping the ways survivors interpret their life trajectories, historical experiences, and identities as Jewish, Ukrainian, and civic actors.

Methodologically, the research is based on a longitudinal oral history approach. It draws on a unique corpus of interviews with Holocaust survivors from cities such as Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Khmelnytskyi, recorded before 2022, followed by interviews conducted in Germany after their evacuation. A further round of interviews is planned in order to trace how narratives, memories, and perceptions evolve over time under the conditions of renewed war and displacement.

Research interests:

• oral history
• Holocaust memory
• war, displacement, and forced migration
• memory cultures and digital storytelling