Also see the Dianne Widzinski Visiting Fellows at the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies.
Halyna Bodnar
WCEE Nonresidential Scholar, 2025
IU-Ukraine Nonresidential Scholars Program
Halyna Bodnar is associate professor of contemporary Ukrainian history at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, and a member of the Ukrainian Association of Oral History. Her research interests include history of everyday life, oral history, history and memory of Soviet Ukraine, the Revolution of Dignity and the volunteer movement in Ukraine, oral history of unfolding events in the Russo-Ukrainian War, and memory studies. Bodnar is the author of the monograph Lviv. Daily Life of the City through the Eyes of Migrants from Villages, 1950‒80 (Lviv, 2010). Among her other publications are the co-edited volume On Dignity. Volunteer Movement in Ukraine 2013–2017 (Lviv, 2018. 816 pp.) and Collection of Memories: Maidan from the First Person. Regional level. Lviv‒Chernihiv Region (Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Kyiv, 2018).
Hanna Shvindina
CREES Nonresidential Scholar, 2025
IU-Ukraine Nonresidential Scholars Program
Hanna Shvindina is 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. She holds a PhD in Environmental Economics and a Dr. Sci. (Dr. Hab.) in Management from Sumy State University. She is an accomplished academic and practitioner, having received prestigious international awards, including the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship (2015-2016, University of Montpellier) and Fulbright Scholarship (2018-2019, Purdue University). Since October 2024, Shvindina has been a fellow in the Ukraine Research Network@ZOiS, where she researches female leadership in times of crisis. In 2018, she co-founded and became the CEO of the NGO Lifelong Learning Centre in Sumy. Under her leadership, the organization has successfully implemented numerous social projects focused on adult education, civic engagement, and psychoeducation initiatives, contributing significantly to community development and resilience.
Taras Ustyianovych
WCEE Research Fellow [for Ukrainian PhD Students], Winter 2026
Taras Ustyianovych is a PhD candidate at the Department of Artificial Intelligence Systems at Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine, where his research focuses on multimodal data fusion for climate change modeling and social awareness improvement. His work integrates artificial intelligence and data science to forecast regional climate indicators while identifying social tipping points that drive shifts in environmental behavior.
Monika Żychlińska
WCEE Affiliated Fulbright Scholar (Department of Sociology, U-M)
Monika Żychlińska (PhD Sociology and MA in American Studies, University of Warsaw) teaches at the University of Warsaw’s American Studies Center and is a member of the Memory Studies Association. She is at the University of Michigan on a 10-month Fulbright Fellowship. Her research explores how traumatic and contested pasts are remembered and institutionalized in museums, monuments, and memorials. Żychlińska has studied the Warsaw Uprising Museum’s role in shaping Polish national mythologies and fostering patriotic attitudes among young Poles, as well as the efforts of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance to create and promote new national heroes, known as the “Cursed Soldiers.” In recent years, her research has focused on memory activism, examining civic groups' engagement in commemoration processes. She was a visiting researcher at the New School for Social Research, thanks to the Kościuszko Foundation grant. Her doctoral thesis, Wounded Healers. Memory Activism of the Vietnam Women Memorial Foundation (1984-2013) examined how female Vietnam veterans successfully advocated for building a memorial to their service on the National Mall. It won second prize in the Inka Brodzka-Wald Competition for the most outstanding doctoral theses in contemporary humanities. Żychlińska’s articles have appeared in East European Politics and Societies, Human Remains and Violence, and Kultura i Społeczeństwo.
