welcome
Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, an initiative of the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, aims to promote and contribute to the study of Ukraine in the United Kingdom and beyond. It is committed to deepening public understanding of Ukraine and to advancing fresh, innovative approaches to research on the largest country within Europe, a critical crossroads between 'East' and 'West' with a rich historical, linguistic, and cultural inheritance.
While its primary focus is on the literature and culture of Ukraine, Cambridge Ukrainian Studies seeks to explore – and challenge – conventional notions of disciplinary and geographical borders and to foster a lively exchange between artists, scholars, politicians, and the wider public, as well as between institutions of higher learning in Ukraine, Europe, and North America.
in the news
In December 2009 Cambridge Ukrainian Studies mounted an exhibition of the 1933 diaries of Gareth Jones at the Wren Library, Trinity College. An alumnus of Trinity College and the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Jones was the only journalist to stake his name and reputation in exposing Stalin's brutal terror-famine of 1932-33 (known in Ukrainian as Holodomor) to the world.
The opening of the exhibition coincided with the sold-out British premiere of Serhii Bukovs'kyi's The Living, which headlined the Second Annual Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film.
The exhibition was covered by print, radio, and television media around the world.
'The remarkable story of [Gareth] Jones is being told afresh by his old university, Cambridge, which is putting on public display for the first time Jones's handwritten diaries from his time in Ukraine. They will go on display at the Wren Library alongside items relating to rather better known Trinity old boys such as Newton, Wittgenstein and AA Milne, coinciding with a new documentary about Jones and the famine – The Living – which gets its British premiere this evening.' 13 November 2009
'Rory Finnin, Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, said: "Jones' diaries are a stirring historical record of an often forgotten tragedy of the 20th century and are a testament to [his] heroism."' 13 November 2009
