“Why Ukraine”—not a question, an assertion.
Notre Dame's Ukrainian Studies Hub advances research, teaching, and public engagement to understand Ukraine — and what Ukraine teaches us about the world. With a commitment to the education of body, mind, and spirit, the Hub seeks to learn about, learn from, and learn with the people of Ukraine.
We study Ukraine as a place from which to rethink some of the fundamental questions of the twenty-first century. Ukraine is where culture sustains itself against aggression and erasure, where civil society innovates and rebuilds from within, where faith traditions join in solidarity to deepen the moral vocabulary of resistance and justice, and where AI and other emerging technologies reshape warfare and the conditions of truth.
These are among the defining global intellectual and spiritual challenges of our time.
The Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Taras Dobko, has called Ukraine “a laboratory for social transformation, innovation, and experimentation.” The Hub takes this insight as an intellectual invitation to galvanize interdisciplinary work at Notre Dame around questions of ethical inquiry and the common good. It presents Ukraine not only as an object of knowledge, but as a subject through which we confront the entanglements of power, knowledge, and human dignity.
Who We Are
Located in the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Notre Dame Ukrainian Studies Hub is an interdisciplinary community forged by a deep partnership with Ukrainian academe and animated by intellectual rigor and the aspirations of Integral Human Development (IHD)—a holistic vision, grounded in Catholic social teaching, of the flourishing of every person and the whole person.
What makes the Hub distinctive is its conviction that the humanities are indispensable to understanding what is most consequential about Ukraine’s past, present, and future; that the questions raised by Ukrainian Studies are both urgent and universal; and that coming to grips with Ukraine's complexity requires scholarship and policy to attend to the moral as much as the material.
At the heart of this work is the University of Notre Dame’s longstanding partnership with the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), one of Europe’s most courageous and creative academic institutions. Since 2004, Notre Dame has forged a unique relationship with UCU’s students and scholars, who are expanding the moral and intellectual horizons of higher education. This partnership is the foundation of the Hub, but not its boundary.
What We Do
The Notre Dame Ukrainian Studies Hub is organized around three primary intellectual vectors that explore the connections between meaning-making, moral imagination, and political order.
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Culture – studying the dynamic artistic and expressive traditions through which Ukrainians—and Crimean Tatars, Ukraine’s indigenous Sunni Muslim people—have forged and defended identities across centuries.
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Faith – exploring Ukraine’s diverse confessional landscape and the role of religious tradition in enacting solidarity and articulating a defiant vision of human dignity. This realm is too often ignored in the conventional study of international relations.
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Peace and Security – viewing Ukraine’s geopolitical and geostrategic significance through what Mykhailo Hrushevsky once described as a “Black Sea orientation.” Russia’s war of aggression began with the seizure of Crimea and escalates through Crimea, underscoring how control of the peninsula—and of the wider Black Sea region—remains decisive for questions of sovereignty, global food security, and the architecture of a durable postwar order.
Across these vectors, the Hub demonstrates what a research university can do when scholarship becomes partnership and when knowledge becomes encounter:
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In the classroom
Shared, experiential learning is our touchstone. Classes in the Ukrainian language and courses in Ukrainian history and culture at Notre Dame draw students from across the University—from engineering and business to theology and the arts. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects bring Notre Dame and Ukrainian students together in virtual classrooms to study history, culture, religion, and peace. Summer schools and study-abroad programs bring Notre Dame and Ukrainian students together in person in Croatia and Poland to explore questions of recovery, cultural heritage, and faith.
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In research
Scholars from Notre Dame and Ukraine join forces through visiting fellowships and joint grant-funded projects to investigate subjects from urban planning to the history of Catholic resistance under communism. Collaborative student research produces permanent resources, including the digital exhibitions Ukrainian Art as Protest and Resilience and Writing the War in Ukraine.
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In publications
Notre Dame and UCU have collaborated on books including The Trauma of Communism (2022), Resilient Universities (2024), and Facing Russian Aggression: Struggle for Security and Peace in Europe (2025). In partnership with the University of Notre Dame Press, the Hub is also launching a new book series in Ukrainian Studies, edited by Professor Yury Avvakumov, beginning with an English translation of Myroslav Marynovych’s The Ukrainian Idea and Christianity.
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In the public square
The Hub convenes scholars, students, policymakers, artists, and civic leaders through conferences and policy fora. Film series extend these conversations to wider audiences. Following the inaugural 2025 conference Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine, the Hub is preparing The Duty of the Good Life: Ukrainian Perspectives on Living on the Edge for March 2027. The Hub is a full member of the Global Coalition for Ukrainian Studies and the driving force behind the new Midwest Alliance for Ukrainian Studies.
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Into practice
The Hub seeks to bring scholarship into direct, sustained exchange with policymakers, practitioners, civil society leaders, and cultural institutions. Research and teaching shape practice; practice informs research and teaching. In 2026 the Hub convened its first Ukraine Impact Forum in Washington, DC — gathering policymakers and scholars from Notre Dame and UCU to put knowledge to work. Closer to home, the Hub seeks to engage veterans and Notre Dame's award-winning ROTC program, whose experience of service enriches the Hub's peace and security vector.
How It Matters
Ukraine’s rich cultural, religious, and civic traditions reveal how societies find moral resources for resistance and solidarity even when their very existence is threatened.
Ukraine’s fight against aggression and imperialism is a struggle over sovereignty and independence, but also over the future of the very concept of freedom. Its long experience of epistemic and information warfare raises urgent questions about how truth endures in an age of digital disinformation. Its reconstruction asks what it means not only to rebuild infrastructure, but to heal communities and foster trust, care, and hope.
With more than 1,000 Catholic universities and higher-education institutions around the world as potential partners, the Hub aims to expand the global conversation about Ukraine, with particular attention to building intellectual bridges across Latin America, Africa, and Asia – regions where Ukraine remains relatively poorly known, but where its experiences can enrich shared conversations about sovereignty, development, and human dignity.
Studying Ukraine does not ask us to look away from our own world. It helps us see that world more clearly.
This is Why Ukraine.
Past Events
View all Ukraine Past Events
Ukraine Today: Where is the country heading?
A virtual flash panel (recording available)
Ukrainian Studies Hub Members
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Associate Professor of Theology
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Professor of German; Chair of the Department of German, Slavic, and Eurasian Studies
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Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Peace Studies
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Professor of the Practice in Architecture; Director of the Housing & Community Regeneration Initiative
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Rector, Ukrainian Catholic University
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Professor of the Practice, Film Production
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Professor of English; Faculty Director of the Inspired Leadership Initiative
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John T. Ryan Jr. Professor Emeritus of International Business Ethics; Concurrent Professor Emeritus in the Keough School of Global Affairs
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Paul G. Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters; Professor of German; Concurrent Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science; Founding Director of Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study
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Professor of English
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Program Director, Grants and Publications, Nanovic Institute for European Studies
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Master of Global Affairs ’25
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Professor of Anthropology
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Senior Advisor for Faculty Fellow Affairs and Partnerships
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Assistant Professor of Environment, Peace, and Global Affairs
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William M. Scholl Professor Emeritus of International Affairs
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Professor and Associate Department Chair of Psychology
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Robert & Marion Short Professor of Law; Professor of International Peace Studies
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Associate Research Professor of Anthropology
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Executive Director, Nanovic Institute for European Studies
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Professor of Political Science
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Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the School of Architecture and Professor of Architecture
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Award-Winning Journalist from Ukraine; Master of Global Affairs ’22
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Head of the Cultural Studies Department, Ukrainian Catholic University
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Director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; Professor of Social Ethics
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Program Manager of Finance and Administration, Nanovic Institute for European Studies
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Assistant Teaching Professor of Russian; Director of Undergraduate Studies in Russian
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Associate Professor of Peace Studies
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Dean of Humanities, Ukrainian Catholic University