The IWM is pleased to announce the launch of its new research program, Ukraine and the World. Building on the Institute’s longstanding intellectual engagement with Ukraine and Ukrainian scholars, this new program marks the transition of the activities launched in reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine from emergency response to a sustained program. In doing so, the IWM expands the conceptual horizons of its existing academic programming on Ukraine.
Through Ukraine and the World, the IWM encourages the exploration of trans-geographic and cross-chronological linkages to think about life during and after war; the ongoing reconsideration of Ukrainian history, society, and culture through a global lens and vice versa; and, more generally, the examination of ways in which thinking deeply about Ukraine can help us better understand the world as a whole.
Ukraine and the World continues the work of two IWM programs: Ukraine in European Dialogue (UiED), which concluded in summer 2025, and Documenting Ukraine (DocU), which is now becoming an integral component of Ukraine and the World.
For decades now, visiting fellows from Ukraine have contributed to the IWM’s scholarly community. In the wake of the Revolution of Dignity and Russia’s invasion of the Donbas in 2014, the Institute recognized the importance of systematic engagement with the country and its intellectual and cultural sphere, and the mutual benefit of sustained encounters between Ukrainian thinkers and their counterparts from across Europe and North America. In response, the IWM established the UiED program in 2015.
From the start, the Temerty Family Foundation put full confidence in the mission of UiED, and the Foundation’s generosity made our work possible. We are honored that they will continue to support our efforts with Ukraine and the World.
While UiED was prompted by the Maidan uprising, DocU was initiated in the spring of 2022 as an immediate response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The program has a dual mission: to support Ukrainian academics, creative professionals, and journalists as they chronicle the Russo-Ukrainian War, and to establish a multi-disciplinary digital archive of the materials they gather and create.
The core elements of UiED and DocU will be brought together in Ukraine and the World. Support for intellectual enquiry about Ukraine, and especially that which integrates Ukraine into larger global considerations, remains at the heart of the program. Residential fellowships within Ukraine and the World, in keeping with customary IWM practice, will now be named after Lesia Ukraïnka (Larysa Kosach, 1872-1913), one of Ukraine’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals. Fellowships are open to those whose scholarship addresses global issues in culture, society, or politics, with reference to the Ukrainian past and present. The study of Ukraine has now moved far beyond a traditional area studies model: today, scholars working on wide-ranging chronologies and topics in various disciplines are incorporating Ukrainian themes into their work. Senior and mid-career scholars are awarded fellowships by invitation, while junior fellowships are awarded to PhD candidates and early-career researchers via an annual call for applications.
In addition to these residential fellowships, the Documenting Ukraine grant program will continue through 2027 thanks to the generosity of our donors—the Arcadia Fund first and foremost. With over 450 grants awarded to date, the program will ultimately provide support to more than 750 documentary projects proposed by Ukrainian scholars, journalists, and creative professionals.
Ukraine and the World is rooted in sustained collaboration with institutional partners. We are delighted to continue and indeed deepen our programming cooperation with the Center for Urban History (Lviv). The annual Most Documented War symposium will be complemented by events throughout the year and joint publication initiatives. We will also be co-organizing a series of workshops in Vienna together with the Ukrainian History Global Initiative.
Implementing the DocU archival project is a major focus of Ukraine and the World over the next five years. We are pleased to be working with the Public History Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto to develop a durable, innovative approach to the digital preservation of this unique collection of materials and are grateful to the Peter and Anna Kolchinsky Family Foundation for their support of the DocU archive.
As UiED wraps up, the IWM would like to thank the program’s inaugural and final research directors, whose efforts and insights were central to UiED’s success. Dr. Tatiana Zhurzhenko (UiED Research Director 2015-2018) forged the program’s identity with the care, perceptiveness, and wide-ranging curiosity so characteristic of her academic work, and brought a truly remarkable community of fellows to the IWM. Dr. Mariia Shynkarenko (UiED Research Director 2024-2025) made invaluable contributions to building UiED’s international partnership network and opened up new avenues of inquiry for the program, not least through her own research. We are grateful for both of their contributions.
Ukraine and the World is headed by Professor Timothy Snyder, Lesia Ukrainka Permanent Fellow at the IWM and inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School. In shaping the program’s intellectual and programmatic agenda, he is joined by two scholars. Dr. Katherine Younger, who concludes her term as IWM Permanent Fellow in September 2025, remains part of Ukraine and the World as Documenting Ukraine’s Head of Archiving, while also taking up the Peter and Anna Kolchinsky Family Foundation Research Fellowship in Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Taras Fedirko, an IWM Senior Research Fellow and a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Glasgow, is the program’s in-house lead. They are supported by Ukraine and the World program staff, led by incoming Ukraine and the World Project Manager Anastasiia Kovach, who has been at the IWM since 2023.
The artwork accompanying the announcement is entitled Purist Composition (1926) and was created by the renowned artist Olexandra Exter. As one of the “Amazons of the avant-garde,” Exter not only created works rooted in her life experiences in Kyiv and promoted Ukrainian folk art abroad, but also advocated for the development of the Ukrainian avant-garde by bringing contemporary global art trends to Ukrainian cities.
