Name: Olena Nikolayenko
Where you currently live: New York City
Current Position: Professor of Political Science and Director of the FCRH Honors Program
at Fordham University
Professional Interests: Comparative politics, civil resistance, social movements
Why did you decide to join the Shevchenko Scientific Society?
My decision to join the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States derived from my aspirations to find a community of like-minded scholars in the field of Ukrainian Studies. This organization plays a vital role in advancing the study of Ukraine from a multidisciplinary perspective and fostering an extensive network of scholars with a commitment to developing Ukrainian Studies in North America and beyond.
What do you value about membership in the Society?
What I value most about membership in the Society is the opportunity to meet scholars from different disciplines, with a shared interest in the study of Ukraine. One of the events that stood out to me was a roundtable “Women and Russia’s War on Ukraine,” held in March 2022, a few weeks after Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian scholars based in Australia, Germany, Poland, and the United States discussed women’s experiences of war and women’s activism in contemporary Ukraine.
Another memorable event, organized jointly with Fulbright Ukraine in October 2022, featured several alumni of Fulbright programs. Halyna Hryn, President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US, and Jessica Zychowycz, Director of the Fulbright Program in Ukraine, discussed how the two organizations seek to support Ukrainian scholars. Then, a few Fulbright fellows presented their current work. For example, Natalia Otrishchenko, Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University, made a presentation about the oral history project “24.02.22, 5 a.m.: Testimonies from the War.” The project was implemented by the Lviv-based Center for Urban History of East Central Europe jointly with a team of Polish scholars.
How did your interest in Ukrainian culture and society influence your career path?
Born and raised in Ukraine, I witnessed the country’s transition from communism and developed a keen interest in the study of comparative politics. As a PhD student at the University of Toronto, I decided to write my dissertation about the political attitudes of high school students in Russia and Ukraine, which resulted in my first book, Citizens in the Making in Post-Soviet States (Routledge, 2011). The organization of the 2004 Graduate Student Symposium in Ukrainian Studies, bringing together junior scholars from Canada and the United States, was a highlight of my graduate studies at the university.
With the support of a post-doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, I further explored the linkage between youth and politics. Drawing on fieldwork in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Serbia, and Ukraine, I analyzed the emergence of nonviolent youth movements aimed at defending the integrity of elections and bringing about political change in the region. The main findings from my post-doctoral project have been published in my second book, Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
As a professor of political science at Fordham University, I seek to enhance students’ understanding of East European politics. In the spring of 2013, I taught the course Youth and Politics with a study abroad component and organized a visit of undergraduate students to the Ukrainian Catholic University. More recently, I took a group of Fordham students on a study tour to Brussels, home to several European Union institutions, and American students had an opportunity to learn more about the Russia-Ukraine war from the perspective of European diplomats.
What is your current project?
My recent book, Invisible Revolutionaries: Women’s Participation in Ukraine’s Euromaidan (Cambridge University Press, April 2025), examines women’s engagement in the Revolution of Dignity. Drawing on data from large-N surveys and oral history projects conducted by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance and the Center for the Studies of History and Culture of East European Jewry at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the book uncovers various motivations for women’s involvement, identifies diverse forms of women’s participation, and traces the multifaceted outcomes of women’s activism. Theoretically, the book contributes to contentious politics literature by proposing a typology of women’s participation in a revolution.
I also contributed a chapter, titled “Contesting the Gender Binary in Wartime: Ukrainian Women’s Resistance to Russia’s Aggression,” to the Handbook of Gender and Activism. In the chapter, the concept of women’s activism is used to encompass a variety of actions undertaken by Ukrainian women over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war.
In addition, I am currently conducting research on labor activism in Belarus. According to the Global Rights Index compiled by the International Trade Union Confederation, Belarus is currently one of the worst countries in the world in terms of labor rights violations. In 2022, the Belarusian Supreme Court designated independent trade unions as “extremist organizations” and ruled to liquidate them. Nonetheless, thousands of people, including employees at large state-run enterprises, joined civil resistance in the aftermath of the 2020 fraudulent elections and police brutality against peaceful protesters.
What career advice would you give to new members of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States?
It is difficult to give career advice to recent PhD graduates in this climate of political and socioeconomic uncertainty. Despite a recent spike in interest in Ukrainian culture and calls for decolonization in East European Studies, there have been a handful of tenure-stream job openings in social sciences, with a focus on Eastern Europe. Under such circumstances, it is important to reflect on the ways in which the case of Ukraine might be considered critical to addressing a puzzle in the literature and, thus, attract a wider audience.