Jacyk Fellowship scholar Dudko to explore war-scarred history of Ukraine

Oksana Dudko is happily settling into her new home on the Prairies.

The landscape of Saskatchewan is not much different from her home in Western Ukraine, both with fertile plains making them agricultural powerhouses.

But as Dudko gets to know her new city of Saskatoon, taking idyllic strolls along the river valley, she is often thinking of darker imagery – the carnage and human suffering of the First World War and the political turmoil in its aftermath that shaped modern Ukraine.

Dudko is a Ukrainian history scholar and the recent recipient of the Jacyk Fellowship in Ukrainian Studies. She will spend the next year at STM College and the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage (PCUH).

“All scholars who work on the history of Ukraine know about PCUH, so I'm really happy to be here,” she said. “I was finishing my doctoral studies at University of Toronto, so now I'm working on my dissertation focusing on Ukrainian soldiers during the First World War and the revolution.”

“I hope to have my book published on the topic based on my dissertation. Hopefully I will have time to work on the transition from my dissertation to my book during the fellowship.”

She said it's quite an important topic in terms of the Ukrainian history because it was also a period when Ukrainians tried to fight for their independence.

“It’s also a really exciting time period to study because Ukrainian territories were divided between two empires -- the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire -- so I think there is a lot to research on the topic. I started to work on soldiers’ identity and how they experienced the war and the revolution afterwards.”

“I'll also be teaching two courses - a general course about the history of the Soviet Union in the fall term and the history of Ukraine in the spring term.”

Dudko also plans to work on an article about Ukrainian women soldiers during the First World War, and to set up an international conference about Ukrainians – both in Ukraine and Canada - during and after the First World War.

“During the next year we are hoping to have a round table or small workshop on the topic of the so-called Ukrainian question during the 19th and the 20th century,” Dudko said. “So, it's basically about Ukraine in international relations and so we are hoping to invite different scholars, both from Canada and probably the U.S. and Ukraine, and to have an online roundtable on the topic sometime in spring.”

The Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Ukrainian Studies is made possible by funding from the Petro Jacyk Education Foundation.