Also see the Dianne Widzinski Visiting Fellows at the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies.
Kristina But
WCEE Research Fellow [for Ukrainian PhD Students], Winter 2024
Kristina But was born and raised in Melitopol, Ukraine and was forced to relocate due to the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism and is currently pursuing a PhD in journalism at Zaporizhzhia National University. Her dissertation research focuses on "Media Reality as a Component of Protest Movements." As a freelance journalist, she focuses on temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, human rights, civic activism, and solutions, and she has been recognized for her fact-checking investigations. In April 2023, she launched the micromedia outlet “MARA: A Guide to Coping with Loss"—a regularly updated online platform for grief processing—to provide informational, emotional, and psychological support, as well as to conduct research on death from cultural, historical, and psychological perspectives. Relatedly, she founded the NGO “To Be” in December 2023 in order to provide informational and psychological support to people experiencing grief and assistance in coping with loss. This includes awareness campaigns, in-depth research, aid, and protection for individuals who have suffered losses, military personnel and their families, internally displaced persons, people with disabilities, those in need of palliative or hospice care, and more.
Olga Kotiuk
Professional Fellow, Spring 2024
As part of her participation in the U.S. Department of State's Professional Fellows Program for Europe and Eurasia, Olga Kotiuk served as a professional fellow with WCEE in May - June 2023 and supported NGO Leadership Workshop planning and strategic partnerships. She is a consultant for the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine/Chemonics, where she leads the Transitional Justice and Culture workstreams. She advises on policy development related to POWs as well those missing and deported utilizing community outreach including NGOs, police representatives and local government officials. She also has a background in emergency and disaster response projects including post-war recovery, community safety and security, civic engagement and conflict management legislation research and development. In 2021, with the Ministry of Reintegration and Temporary Occupied Territories, Ms. Kotiuk also analyzed strategic rebuilding strategies including veteran and human rights NGO outreach. She holds an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economic and Political Science and an MA in Theory of State and Law from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Julia Laureau
CCPS Visiting Scholar, Winter 2024
Julia Laureau is a PhD candidate in social and political sciences and a F.R.S-FNRS fellow (FRESH) at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Prospective (LAAP) of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Specializing in contemporary Poland, she works on issues of gender and democracy, as well as nationalism and the far-right. She holds M.A.s in political theory (Sciences Po Paris) and in anthropology (UCLouvain). She wrote her first master's thesis on the nationalism of the PiS Party, interpreted through psychoanalysis, and the second on the Strajk Kobiet mobilization in the Polish feminist community in Brussels. Rooted in a political anthropology of the present, her doctoral research explores the status of women as political subjects and in the relationship between patriarchy and democracy in Poland, drawing on an ethnography of the struggles around abortion rights—a subject at the heart of the country's political polarization. She is also an associate researcher at the Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies (CCFEF/OKFiSF) at the University of Warsaw and a member of the Chaire Anthropologie de l’Europe contemporaine (LAAP/UCLouvain).
