Chornobyl and Its Legacies Today: Ecocide, Cultural Responses, and Critical Geopolitics. Webinar

Join us for a timely discussion on the anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, exploring its enduring impact through the lenses of environmental violence, cultural memory, and geopolitical critique. Featuring presentations by Stanislav Menzelevskyi (Indiana University), Nathaniel Pickett (National Institute for Children’s Health Quality), and Darya Tsymbalyuk (University of Chicago), along with a screening of Chornobyl 22, a short film by Oleksiy Radynski.

Moderated by Vitaly Chernetsky, President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

Stanislav Menzelevskyi is a film scholar, archivist, and co-founder of the Medusa publishing project in Ukraine. Stanislav headed the Research and Programming Department of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center for over a decade.  He is the co-author of the compilation films Atomopolis. Assembling Utopia (2016) and Lviv-Intervision (2018). Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. at the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington, after spending time as a Fulbright Fellow at UC Berkeley (2018) and a Carnegie Fellow at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute (2013).

Nathaniel Ray Pickett received his doctorate from the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Kansas in 2022. Over the course of his academic career, he has published work on a variety of topics at the intersection of power, knowledge, and space, including articles on territorial cleansing; incorporating Science, Technology, and Society methodologies in geographic research; and the long-term effects of the Chornobyl disaster on Ukrainian society, politics, and culture. In 2015-16, Dr. Pickett was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Ukraine where he conducted archival research and interviews for his dissertation work. Most recently, he published “Chornobyl Body Politics: Making Environmental Violence Visible” with Dr. Shannon O’Lear in Exploring Environmental Violence (2024). He currently works at the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality.

Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary researcher, and her practice includes writing and image-making. Most of Darya’s work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research. Darya is the author of Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity Press 2025). Among her many shorter publications is a double special issue on the environmental humanities of Ukraine co-edited with Tanya Richardson and forthcoming with East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. In addition to writing, Darya also works with images through drawing, painting, collage, and film essays. Darya serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago.