KSU Representatives Become VUIAS Fellows
Daria Malchykova, Vice-Rector for Educational, Scientific and Pedagogical Affairs, Professor, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, and Mykola Homanyuk, PhD in Sociology and Associate Professor, have been selected as fellows of the Virtual Ukraine Institute for Advanced Study (VUIAS) for the 2025–2026 academic year.
The VUIAS program, launched in 2023 by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin with the support of the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany), combines research fellowships with active academic cooperation through seminars, panel discussions, round tables, and training sessions in Ukraine, in partnership with the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.
Daria Malchykova — Professor, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Geography and Ecology, and Vice-Rector for Educational, Scientific and Pedagogical Affairs at KSU.
Within the framework of her fellowship, Daria Malchykova will implement the project: “Spaces and People Forged by War: (In)Stability of Transformed Everyday Practices and Rethinking Urban Planning.”
The project explores the impact of war on communities, urban spaces, and everyday practices, aiming to support post-war recovery and community cohesion. It examines demographic changes, settlement transformation, socio-spatial processes, and challenges of post-war reconstruction, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Using the example of the Kherson urban community, the study analyzes adaptation to war, shifts in social needs, limited access to resources, and the growth of local activism.
Mykola Homanyuk — PhD in Sociology, Associate Professor of the Department of Geography and Ecology at KSU.
His research project is titled: “Ethnic Minorities of Ukraine During the War: Adaptation to Crisis, Belonging, and Preservation of Identity.”
The project investigates how the full-scale war influences the sense of belonging of ethnic minorities to the Ukrainian political nation and to their own ethnic communities. It pays particular attention to identity transformations and the role of the kin-state in shaping the political identity of ethnic minorities. The research focuses on two border regions of Ukraine — Transcarpathia (Hungarian minority) and Odesa region (Moldovan/Romanian minority). For comparison, it also analyzes groups without a kin-state — Roma and Crimean Tatar communities.
Preliminary results indicate that well-established Hungarian and Romanian minorities, which have developed civil society networks, facilitated cross-border communication and received assistance from their kin-states. The project seeks to determine whether this has contributed to the long-term consolidation of civic identity among these minority groups.
Press Center of KSU
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