Mission and Program

The Ukrainian Research Institute (URI) forms a vital component of Harvard University's vibrant international studies community. The Institute's mission includes the advancement of knowledge about Ukraine in the United States through research and teaching of the highest quality. This mission was shaped by URI's founder, Omeljan Pritsak, the first Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and a scholar of broad scope and erudition, who served as the Institute's first director until his retirement in 1989, and by another Harvard scholar of international distinction, Ihor Sevcenko, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Literature and History.

With Ukraine's independence, the Institute's mission has broadened to include contemporary political, social, and economic issues. URI also seeks to foster the study of the diverse religious and ethnic groups that make their home in Ukraine, to act as a bridge between Ukrainian studies and the study of Russia, Poland, Turkey, Belarus, and Moldova, and to develop close and supportive relations with Ukraine's emerging cultural and academic institutions.

The Institute's programs are supported by the work of three endowed professorships in Ukrainian studies in the Departments of History and Slavic Languages and Literatures together with associated faculty at Harvard and from other universities, visiting scholars, and graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard. URI has a publications program that distributes its titles through Harvard University Press and publishes a journal of Ukrainian studies. The Institute also maintains a reference library and archives, a mid-career fellows program for business people, government officials, and media personnel, and a seminar series in Ukrainian studies within the Harvard curriculum. The Institute organizes the Ukrainian Summer Institute, which is part of the Harvard Summer School and hosts conferences, symposia, and special seminars for practitioners and policymakers, in addition to lectures, films, art exhibits, and other public programs.

The Institute forms an integral part of Harvard's National Resource Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies and works closely with the Center for European Studies, the Davis Center for Russian Studies, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Center for Jewish Studies, and a wide range of other institutes, centers, departments, schools, and faculties with international programs.