Description:

Please join the Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies Research Program and the Comparative Politics Workshop as they host Volodymyr Kulyk, Visiting Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and Head Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in Februrary 2022 led to radical changes in Ukrainian citizens’ identities, attitudes, and patterns of language use. With the drastic deterioration of attitudes toward Russia and Russians, most Ukrainian citizens cam to see themselves first and foremost as members of the Ukrainian nation fighting against the aggressor. This change in perceptions of Self and Other was accompanied by a change in language use marked by an impressive shift toward Ukrainian, particularly in public communication. Based on the results of four nationwide surveys and two series of focus groups in different parts of the country, Volodymyr Kulyk analyzes the dynamics of identifications and patterns of language use among different categories of Ukrainian population. 

About the speaker:

Volodymyr Kulyk is a Head Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He has also taught at Columbia, Stanford and Yale Universities, Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Ukrainian Catholic University as well as having research fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, Woodrow Wilson Center, University College London, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and other Western scholarly institutions. His research fields include the politics of language, memory and identity as well as political and media discourse in contemporary Ukraine, on which he has widely published in Ukrainian and Western journals and collected volumes. Professor Kulyk is the author of four books, the latest of which is Movna polityka v bahatomovnykh kraïnakh: Zakordonnyi dosvid ta ioho prydatnist’ dlia Ukraïny (Language Policies in Multilingual Countries: Foreign Experience and Its Relevance to Ukraine) that was published in Kyiv in 2021. Currently he is a Visiting Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.

The talk will take place in Scott Hall Room 212 with an option for virtual attendance.  Please register for the Zoom link.