Read more about the residential fellowship, launched in Spring 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and extended through August 2025.
Oksana Chabanyuk (2022-2025) is an associate professor of architecture at Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy, Ukraine. She is an architect and received her BA in Architecture (1998), MA in Urban Planning (2000), and PhD (2004) at the National University Lviv Polytechnic, Ukraine. As of September 2025, Chabanyuk will be a visiting associate professor at the University of Chicago.
Chabanyuk’s academic interests include: standardization and early industrialization in the USSR, the related influence of foreign specialists, prefabrication in industrial construction and housing, post-socialist housing, social housing, and regeneration of residential areas. She has participated in international competitions, programs, and workshops, and has presented her research at international conferences, roundtables, and seminars.
She previously was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar (2019-20) at the University of Michigan, where her research focused on the contribution of American specialists to the development of industry and cities in 1920-30s Eastern Ukraine. Chabanyuk authored a chapter “The Forgotten History of Foreign Specialists in Soviet Industry in the 1920 and 1930s: The Case of Eastern Ukraine” in the book Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917-1945 (MIT Press, 2023).
During her WCEE fellowship at U-M, she taught two courses — "Architecture of Soviet Ukraine" and "Urban Concepts in Eastern Europe XIX-XX Centuries" — at U-M’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, cross-listed with the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES).
Her U-M faculty mentor was Lars Gräbner, associate professor of practice in architecture.
Yurii Kaparulin (2022-2025) is an associate professor in the Department of National, International Law, and Law Enforcement, and director of the Raphael Lemkin Center for Genocide Studies, at Kherson State University. He was awarded a 2024-27 Raoul Wallenberg Fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Kaparulin holds a PhD in History and an MA in Law. He studies the history and law of Eastern Europe, with particular interests in Holocaust and genocide studies, human rights, crimes against humanity, and political repression in the Soviet Union and during World War II. His research has been published in The Ideology and Politics Journal; Colloquia Humanistica; City History, Culture, Society; Eastern Europe Holocaust Studies; Ukraina Moderna; and BBC News Ukraine.
Previously, he has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2018-19), Yahad-In Unum in Paris (2019), New Europe College in Bucharest (2021-22), and the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (2022).
During his WCEE fellowship at U-M, Kaparulin taught courses for the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) — “The Crimes of Genocide in the History of Ukraine (XX-XXI Centuries)” and “The Holocaust in Ukraine: History and Memory.”
Kaparulin is currently working on a monograph entitled “Between Soviet Modernization and the Holocaust: Jewish Agrarian Settlements in the Southern Ukraine (1924-1948).” Together with Les Kasyanov (photographer, director, and member of the Yahad-in Unum expeditions), Kaparulin is co-director of the documentary films Kalinindorf (2020) and Unknown Holocaust (2021). His U-M faculty mentor was Jeffrey Veidlinger, Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies.
Iryna Sikorska (2022) is an associate professor of sociology at Donetsk State University of Management in Mariupol (displaced to Mariupol in 2014 due to Russian aggression and military conflict in Eastern Ukraine). She holds a PhD in public administration from Donetsk State University of Management, with the dissertation, “The Mechanisms of Enhancement of State Governance of Higher Education in Ukraine in the Context of European Integration.” In 2015, she founded the Ukrainian Association of Professors and Researchers of European Integration (APREI), which is a platform for cooperation among academia and civil society to promote European integration processes in Ukraine. Her research interests include European intercultural education policies, intercultural dimensions of internationalization of higher education, and development of intercultural competences in higher education. Her U-M faculty mentor was Geneviève Zubrzycki, WCEE Director; Weiser Family Professor of European and Eurasian Studies; and William H. Sewell Jr. Collegiate Professor of Sociology.
Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova (2022-2025) is an associate professor and deputy dean of the Department of Journalism at Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine. She holds a PhD in social communications and Master’s degrees with Honors in English philology and international journalism. Her research interests are global media and journalism, new media, media and information literacy, disinformation, and political communication. As of August 2025, Sirinyok-Dolgaryova is pursuing a PhD in mass communication at Southern Illinois University.
Sirinyok-Dolgaryova has experience working as a journalist in Ukraine and the United States. She has participated in several international research and study programs including at Graceland University as part of the UGRAD Program; Southern Illinois University as a Fulbright Visiting Researcher; Utah State University with IREX University Administration Support Program; European University Viadrina with U-LEAD; and in the UK, Sweden, and Poland as an Erasmus+ Fellow.
As a WCEE fellow, Sirinyok-Dolgaryova worked on the research project “Countering Disinformation among Cyber Threats in the Russia-Ukraine War: Telegram-based Resistance by Ukrainian Government-led Volunteer Forces.” She also taught two courses for the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) — “Disinformation and Propaganda in the Russia-Ukraine War” and “Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe.” Her U-M faculty mentor was Pauline Jones, professor of political science.
Anna Taranenko (2022-2023) is a senior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She holds a PhD in international relations from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She also holds an MA in Hispanic studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) under the auspices of the Fulbright Graduate Student Program. Her professional experience encompasses work at the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), Constitutional Court of Ukraine, ADASTRA think tank, and internships at the Ukrainian Parliament and the Parliament of Canada. Her research interests include foreign policy analysis, conflict resolution, and international security — in particular, cybersecurity, fighting disinformation, and enhancing media literacy. Her U-M faculty mentor was Brian Weeks, associate professor of communication and media.
Kseniya Yurtayeva (2022-2024) is an associate professor of criminal law and criminology at Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs. She holds a PhD in criminal law, criminology, and criminal-executive law from the State Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, and an LLM in international and comparative law from Chicago-Kent College of Law. She teaches courses in criminal law, criminology, and cybercrime prosecution. Yurtayeva is also a certified trainer for the National School of Judges of Ukraine and a developer of the course in cybersecurity and human rights in cyberspace for judiciary candidates. She coauthored multiple legal textbooks in Ukraine and has published numerous scientific articles.
As a WCEE fellow, Professor Yurtayeva conducted research work on “Cyberaggression as a Method Applied in Contemporary Warfare” and “Engaging Post-Truth in Shadowing Russian War Crimes.” She also participated in the Midwestern Symposium “Russia and the Future of European Security” (Ann Arbor), and at scientific conferences in Odesa, Berlin, and Vinnytsia. During the 2023-24 academic year, she taught the course “Theory of Hybrid Conflicts in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War” for the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES), cross-listed with the Ford School of Public Policy.
Her U-M faculty mentor was Susan D. Page, director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center; professor of practice in international diplomacy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; and professor from practice at the Law School.
