CREES and WCEE support nonresident scholars from Ukraine through Big Ten Academic Alliance initiative
The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) at the University of Michigan are proud to each sponsor a Ukrainian scholar in 2025 through the IU-Ukraine Nonresidential Scholars Program.
Established by Indiana University’s Robert F. Byrnes Russian and Eastern European Institute shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the innovative program has allowed 69 Ukrainian scholars to continue their vital research and teaching in wartime conditions, and will now expand to eight additional Big Ten universities with support from the Big Ten Academic Alliance. At least 30 more Ukrainian scholars in the social sciences and humanities will now be able to participate in the one-year, non residential scholarship at one of the nine Big Ten host schools.
Sponsorship from WCEE and CREES reflects the centers’ continued commitment to supporting Ukrainian scholars — in 2022, WCEE created the Scholars at Risk Fellowship, allowing seven Ukrainian scholars to come to Ann Arbor with their families and continue their work at the University of Michigan. Additionally, WCEE has provided non-residential fellowships for the last two summers for students and scholars unable to leave Ukraine to attend the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) summer program. CREES has partnered in support of the WCEE Scholars at Risk Fellowship, with Fellows teaching REEES courses at U-M.
CREES is delighted to support Hanna Shvindina, an associate professor at the American University Kyiv (AUK), where she also serves as the Academic Director of the Global Management Program and the Head of the Institutional Review Board at the School of Management. Read her full bio.
U-M Faculty Partner: Elizabeth King, CREES director, associate professor of health behavior & health equity and of global public health.
WCEE is pleased to sponsor Halyna Bodnar, an associate professor of contemporary Ukrainian history at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, and a member of the Ukrainian Association of Oral History. Read her full bio.
U-M Faculty Partner: Geneviève Zubrzycki, WCEE director, Weiser Family Professor in European and Eurasian Studies, and William H. Sewell Jr. Collegiate Professor of Sociology .