The Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies is proud to announce the recipients of 2024-2025 Non-Resident Ukrainian Fellows.
The Fellowship is open to Ukrainian faculty or Ukrainian advanced PhD students working on research topics in Eastern Christian history, liturgy, spirituality or theology who have been affected by the war on Ukraine. During the term of their Fellowship, each of our talented colleagues will work on their respective projects and will present their research in a lecture at the end of their fellowship. More details about dates of lectures will be announced in the near future. The Non-Resident Fellows program has also benefitted from the generous collaboration of the Jacyk Centre for the Study of Ukraine (at the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies (CEES) at the Munk School, University of Toronto).
Dr. Andrii Smyrnov is a professor at the Department of History at the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ukraine). His research interests are focused primarily on Church history, Church-state relations and ecumenism. Dr. Smyrnov earned his Doctor of Historical Sciences degree in 2021 at the National University of Ostroh Academy. He is the author of Between the Cross, the Swastika and the Red Star: Ukrainian Orthodoxy during the Second World War (2021) as well as a number of publications on the history of religion
Dr. Smyrnov serves as a member of the Expert Council under the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, Synodal Commission for the inter-Christian relations of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Pathways to Peace Initiative steering group of the Conference of European Churches, and the World Council of Churches reference group for the pilgrimage of justice, reconciliation and unity.
During his fellowship, Dr. Andrii Smyrnov will work on his research project, titled “The Orthodox Church of Ukraine: Ecumenical Perspectives.”
Dr. Iuliia Korniichuk holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from National Pedagogical Dragomanov University in Kyiv. She has taught courses in Ukrainian Culture, Religious Studies and Religion and Politics at both National Pedagogical Dragomanov University and the University of Warsaw.
Dr. Korniichuk has been a fellow in various programs, including Lane Kirkland Programme, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Indiana University Bloomington, and University of Munich. Her key publications appear in Politics and Religion Journal, Religions, Stosunki Międzynarodowe – International Relations, and the forthcoming Eastern Journal of European Studies.
Her research interests encompass religion and politics, Eastern Orthodoxy, higher education, decolonisation, and Euro-integration. For the MASI Non-Resident Fellowship she will begin work on a project entitled “Challenges for International Representation of Ukrainian Orthodox Churches: Soviet Legacies in Contemporary Perspective.”
Dr. Taras Tymo is a patristic scholar who holds a bachelor’s degree from the Ukrainian Catholic University (L’viv, Ukraine, 1999); a licentiate (STL) in Theology and Patristics (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, 2001); and an MA in Early Christian studies from the University of Notre Dame (USA), 2006. He recently received his Doctorate in Theology (STD) from Ukrainian Catholic University. In 2013,
He taught for the Sheptytsky Institute’s summer program in Univ, Ukraine, on the theology and spirituality of Icons.
His project for the MASI Non-Resident Fellowship extends the work he did in his doctoral dissertation. His project is entitled “Mystery of Theology”: St. Symeon the New Theologian on the Trinity and the Nature of Theology.” Part of this research period will also will include translating for the first time into Ukrainian selected works of St. Symeon.