Yuliya Yurchuk has been an academic in Sweden for 17 years. Her research has focused on Ukraine, and she has written two books on the country. Yet despite her expertise, the history professor at Södertörn University has never taught a course solely dedicated to Ukraine.
“Courses in East European studies are often very Russia-focused,” she said. “In Sweden, there are more researchers looking into Russia compared with someone like me, who studies Ukraine.”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, several Swedish universities have introduced Ukrainian language courses. But Yurchuk said such initiatives do not address the deeper issue that too often Ukraine is still studied through the lens of Russia. “It doesn’t really change the broader environment for Ukrainian studies because you also need courses in Ukrainian literature, history and so on,” she added.
Yurchuk sees this as part of a wider crisis in the humanities, where even Russian studies is feeling the pinch of funding cuts. “There is a crisis in East European studies in general and in this crisis, Ukraine is in an even deeper crisis.”
That predicament was laid out recently in two reports from the Erasmus+ EUkraine Forum project, a collaboration between Inalco University, the University of Warsaw, Charles University and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The reports examine the state of Ukrainian studies across Europe.
