Dr Olenka Pevny, University Lecturer in Early Modern Slavonic Culture and History, will be Director of the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme from 2 October 2018.

Dr Pevny is succeeding Dr Rory Finnin, University Senior Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies, who will be on sabbatical leave from 2018-20 to complete a series of research projects. Finnin is the Founding Director of Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, an academic centre launched in 2008 to advance new approaches to the study of Ukraine. Over the past decade, under his leadership, the centre has trained over 300 undergraduate and postgraduate students and organised over 100 public events to become one of the world’s leading academic centres devoted to the study of Ukraine, the largest country within Europe.

Dr Pevny is a celebrated scholar of the art and culture of Kyivan Rus’ and Ruthenia. Prior to arriving in Cambridge in 2014, Dr. Pevny was Associate Professor of Byzantine and Medieval Art History and Chair of the Art and Art History Department at the University of Richmond. She has worked as an archaeologist in Crimea and Greece and worked in a curatorial capacity at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on The Glory of Byzantium exhibition.

‘Olenka Pevny has singular expertise in the visual culture of Rus, Ruthenia and modern Ukraine, and her enthusiastic commitment to the growth of the field of Ukrainian Studies is contagious,’ said Dr Finnin, who is also the former Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies (2014-18) and former Chair of the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (2011-18). ‘I am very excited to see her take Cambridge Ukrainian Studies in new directions over the years to come.’

‘I am committed to building upon the inspiring accomplishments of Dr Finnin,’ said Dr Pevny. ‘He has established Cambridge Ukrainian Studies as a leading centre of learning and research in Europe, and in the years ahead, I look forward to helping Cambridge continue to advance the study of Ukraine.'

Cambridge Ukrainian Studies is also proud to salute the work of Marta Jenkala, who is stepping down as Cambridge’s Ukrainian Language Instructor to focus on her role as Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL SSEES in London. A beloved teacher and colleague, Jenkala was instrumental in the development of the Ukrainian language open classes and in the language instruction at the heart of popular Paper SL9, ‘Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture of Ukraine.’ She is the author of the online suite of Ukrainian language resources at www.ukrainianlanguage.org.uk.

Joining Cambridge Ukrainian Studies and the Slavonic Studies Section as Affiliated Lecturers in 2018-19 are Daria Mattingly and Bohdan Tokarskyi. A scholar of the Holodomor and the history of Soviet Ukraine, Mattingly is lecturing and supervising on twentieth-century history. A scholar of Ukrainian literary modernism and comparative literature, Tokarskyi is lecturing and supervising on modern Ukrainian language, literature and culture.

In 2018-19 PhD candidates and Ukrainian Language Teaching Fellows Iryna Shuvalova and Maria Terentieva are also continuing their work developing Cambridge’s Ukrainian language open classes with innovative resources and pedagogical approaches. PhD candidate Jon Roozenbeek is working to adapt his viral online ‘Fake News’ game for Ukrainian audiences and to help build on the success of our Ukraine Media Lab initiative. Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Ivan Kozachenko is helping drive the AHRC-funded project ‘Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals and Transforming Societies’, which is partnering with Cambridge Ukrainian Studies on the upcoming conference ‘Engaging Multilinguality: Language, Identity and National Cohesion in Ukraine’.

As we continue to grow, keep abreast of these and other exciting developments at www.CambridgeUkrainianStudies.org and on Facebook and Twitter.