Hope in the Headlines?: Truth and Decolonization in the Ukrainian Media Landscape
In an era of state-sponsored disinformation, media serves as both a kinetic weapon and a vessel for national healing. Join us for a high-level dialogue on Ukraine’s struggle to decolonize its information space, offering a critical case study in neutralizing transnational authoritarian narratives and building systemic democratic resilience in a post-truth world.
Experience the Event
Presented by The Nanovic Institute for European Studies
In an era of state-sponsored disinformation, media serves as both a kinetic weapon and a vessel for national healing. Join us for a high-level dialogue on Ukraine’s struggle to decolonize its information space, offering a critical case study in neutralizing transnational authoritarian narratives and building systemic democratic resilience in a post-truth world.
Speakers include:
- Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova (Michigan): “Values-based Journalism in Ukraine: Fighting a Suppressive Past and Paving an Independent Future”
- Urszula Soler (KUL): “Russian Disinformation and the War in Ukraine: A Legacy of Propaganda”
- Olha Tkachenko (Polish Academy of Sciences): “Decolonization Processes in Ukrainian YouTube: New Hope to Deconstruct Imperial Myths”
Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine is a collaboration between Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, and Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). The conference, hosted at the University of Notre Dame in March 2025, focused on the positive and corrective response to this destruction, exploring reasons for hope, sources of hope, and the politics and ethics of hope in Ukraine. How is hope powerful or even revolutionary? How does it encourage resilience and recovery? And, above all, how can we build and promote the integral development of hope in Ukraine? The conference explored the concept, dynamics, and practices of hope through keynote addresses, panel discussions, the arts, and liturgical observances. For more information visit the event website.
Co-sponsors included:
- Department of German, Slavic, and Eurasian Studies
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
- Notre Dame Democracy Initiative
- Notre Dame Global
- Office of the President, University of Notre Dame
- The Program of Creative Writing
- Raclin Murphy Museum of Art
- Ukrainian Catholic University
Meet the Speaker: Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova
Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova is a WCEE Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan and Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism at Zaporizhzhia National University. Katerina holds a Ph.D. in social communications and master’s degrees with honors in English philology and international journalism. Her expertise includes media and information literacy, global journalism, social media, and media education. She has participated in numerous international programs, including the UGRAD Program (Graceland University), Fulbright Visiting Researcher (Southern Illinois University), IREX (Utah State University), U-LEAD (European University Viadrina), and Erasmus+ Fellowships in the UK, Sweden, and Poland.
Meet the Speaker: Urszula Soler
Urszula Soler is an associate professor at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. She specializes in the study of new technologies in the context of social interactions and security. Her research interests include technology assessment, cybersecurity, disinformation, and information warfare. Dr. Soler has contributed to various publications, such as “The Role of the Cybersecurity Strategy of the Republic of Poland in Ensuring Cybersecurity” and “Education of Society as a Tool to Counteract Disinformation in Implementing New Technologies.” She is actively involved in academic initiatives addressing the societal impacts of technological advancements. In spring 2025, Dr. Soler was a visiting scholar at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame .
Meet the Speaker: Olha Tkachenko
Olha Tkachenko holds a Ph.D. in social sciences, with a focus on media studies, from Warsaw University (2017) and an M.A. in journalism from Ivan Franko Lviv National University (2009). A graduate of the Interinstitutional Individual Studies for Humanities (joint program of Lviv National University, UCU, and University of Warsaw), she currently works at the Institute of Slavic Studies, PAS. As principal investigator of the project Decolonization Processes in Ukraine’s YouTube Segment After February 24, 2022, funded by the National Science Center of Poland, her research focuses on the role of popular culture and media discourses in decolonization, identity formation, and mixed-method content analysis.
Meet the Moderator: Svitlana Khyliuk
Svitlana Khyliuk serves as head of the Department of Theory of Law and Human Rights at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. She is also the academic director of the bachelor’s program at the UCU School of Law. Khyliuk serves as an legal expert in the projects of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Project Coordinator in Ukraine, the Council of Europe, and the U.S. Department of Justice. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Ukraine’s Supreme Court and Constitutional Court. She teaches legal research, analysis, and writing, criminal law, and law of the European Convention on Human Rights.
While at Notre Dame as a visiting scholar during the fall 2021 semester, Khyliuk researched how to leverage two polarities: judicial independence, on the one hand, and judge’s liability, on the other, in order to guarantee democracy and rule of law in transitional societies. She also taught Human Rights: ECtHR approach at Notre Dame Law School.