Revolutionary Ukraine: A History and Politics of Hope

This final segment of the 2025 Ukrainian Studies Hub Conference at Notre Dame includes several guests exploring the topic “Revolutionary Ukraine: A History and Politics of Hope,” followed by concluding remarks from Clemens Sedmak (Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame) and Taras Dobko (rector of Ukrainian Catholic University). Join us on Saturday, March 8, 2025, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. ET.

Dr. George Liber‘s research interests include Soviet, post-Soviet, and East European social history; center-periphery relations in the Soviet Union and its successor states; nationalism and national identity formation; processes of democratization; and 20th-century Ukrainian history. Dr. Liber has dedicated a lifetime to researching, with extended periods in Washington, DC, and Kyiv, Ukraine; he also served as a fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Book publications include Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954 (University of Toronto Press) and Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR, 1923-1934 (Cambridge University Press).

Fr. Yuriy Shchurko earned his Doctorate in Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. In February 2024, His Beatitude Sviatoslav appointed him as the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s Commission on Human Resources for a three-year term. Fr. Shchurko’s scholarly work focuses on biblical studies and theology. He is also a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies during the 2024-25 academic year.

A. James McAdams, for 16 years, served as director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies (2002-2018). He has written extensively on European affairs, particularly Central Europe and global communism. Notable works include East Germany and Detente, Germany Divided, Judging the Past in Unified Germany, and Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party, which was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Foreign Affairs. Dr. McAdams had the incredible vision to establish the Nanovic Institute’s Catholic University Partnership in 2004, partnering Notre Dame with Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) among others. For these extraordinary contributions, he received honorary doctorates from UCU and John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, as well as the distinguished Gold Medal of the Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia.

Speakers:

• A. James McAdams, University of Notre Dame
• Emily Channell-Justice, Harvard
• George O. Liber, University of Alabama at Birmingham
• Fr. Yuriy Shchurko, UCU
• Sophia Wilson, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville

For more information visit the event website.