About

I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University where I trained in the fields of Modern European history (with a specialty in Soviet and east European history), global communism, and memory studies. In general terms, my work seeks to understand how people make sense of tragedies and come to terms with difficult pasts. My dissertation, (tentatively titled) “In the Aftermath of Hunger: Rupture, Response, and Retribution in Soviet Ukraine, 1933-1947,” is a historical case study of the 1932-1933 famine’s (Holodomor) immediate and long-term effects and implications, and I seek to better understand how the famine continued to impact, influence, and shape lives and life trajectories well after starvation officially came to an end. I examine how survivors dealt with the aftermath of the famine and attempted to understand it, the ways in which authorities and state institutions responded to and managed various problems caused by the famine’s disruption, and how a third famine in 1946-1947 came to represent a continuum of hunger and starvation in Soviet Ukraine.

In addition to my research, I currently serve as a board member and editor for the newly launched H-Ukraine, part of the larger H-Net online platform. In 2020, I was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Kyiv, Ukraine.