The Eureast Platform Knowledge Centre 'Ukraine and Eastern Europe' (‘Ukraine-plus’) is an interdisciplinary centre for consolidating, advancing, and disseminating knowledge about Ukraine and other Eastern European countries (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and Moldova). The centre's mission is to strengthen the voices of Ukraine and Eastern Europe in academic debates by organizing research conferences and seminars, building partnerships with local and international institutions and centres, and providing expertise on the region. It aims to serve as a knowledge centre by:
promoting the understanding that Ukraine and Eastern Europe is not a "buffer zone", but a fundamental part of the wider European and international community;
providing a platform for the voices and narratives from the region, thereby challenging the colonial ‘russocentric’ approach, dominant in the studies of Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe;
serving as an in-house information centre offering academic advice for students and researchers at Ghent University who study issues related to Ukraine and Eastern Europe;
promoting the study of and research on Eastern Europe and advancing academic and societal knowledge about the region: its histories, societies, political and economic systems, languages, literatures, and cultures.
Members:
Aleksey (Oleksiy) Yudin's area of specialization is Slavic ethnolinguistics. His work combines linguistic anthropology, ethno-semiotics, folklore studies, and the study of Slavic traditional religion and magic. He is particularly interested in onomastics, or the study of proper names, in the context of East Slavic magical folklore such as magic charms and Christmas carols. Prof. Yudin is an expert in Slavic linguistic axiology, which is the study of value systems and language, as well as semantics and conceptual and discourse analysis, in addition to ethnolinguistics. Membership on the editorial boards of periodicals including "Bulletin of the Orthodox St. Tikhon University," "Folklorica," and "Etnolingwistyka" acknowledges Prof. Yudin's contributions to the study of Slavic ethnolinguistics. He also serves on the International Congress of Slavists' Presidency of the Ethnolinguistic Commission.
Alina Cherviatsova is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow (research project ‘To Destroy or to Preserve? Monuments, Law and Democracy in Europe’), Human Rights Center, Programme for studies on human rights in context, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University. She is a coordinator of the Jean Monnet Module “On-line Ghent University Academy for Ukrainian Lecturers: EU Law and Policy” (2022-25). Dr. Cherviatsova has been awarded research fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Max Planck Institute of European Legal History, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law, the University of Turin, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Toronto. She is an alumna of Max Planck Society, US State Department International Exchange Program, and the Swedish Institute.
Before joining Ghent University in May 2021, she was Associate professor of the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, teaching international law, comparative public law, constitutional law of Ukraine, and human rights. She was Vice Dean for International Cooperation, Faculty of Law, an (co)author of applications and coordinator of 3 Jean Monnet Modules at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (2014-17, 2018-2021, 2019-2021). She was a co-founder of the Journal of Law of the V. N. Karazin National University and Secretary of its editorial board.
Dmytro Panchuk is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Public Governance and Management, Ghent University. In 2017, he defended his PhD in Political Science at the Centre for EU Studies, Ghent University, under the auspices of Erasmus Mundus Action 2 (EuroEast). He earned his Bachelor’s in Philology (English language and literature) from the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ukraine) in 2009 and a Master of Public Administration from Kansas State University (USA) in 2011. In 2012-2013, Dmytro taught introductory courses in Economics, Political Science, and Professional English (Law, PR) at Ostroh Academy. In 2017-2020, after his PhD programme with Ghent University, Dmytro worked as consultant on Ukraine-related research and advocacy projects with the Alliance of Democracy/Rasmussen Global and the Ukrainian World Congress Mission to International Organizations in Brussels.
Katsiaryna Lozka is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Ghent Institute for International and European Studies (GIES). Katsiaryna’s doctoral research focuses on necropolitical violence and resistance in Belarus and Ukraine. She was a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Belarus Observatory, a visiting researcher at the University of Tartu, and a research fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. Katsiaryna holds an MA in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges and a Master's degree in European Studies from Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia). Her interests include politics in Belarus and Ukraine, necro/biopolitics, political violence and resistance, emotions in IR, and visual analysis.
Peter Van Elsuwege is professor of EU law and Jean Monnet Chair at Ghent University, where he is co-director of the Ghent European Law Institute (GELI). He is also visiting professor at the College of Europe (Natolin Campus) and board member of the Centre for the Law of EU External Relations (CLEER) at the Asser Institute in The Hague. His research activities essentially focus on the law of EU external relations and EU citizenship. Specific attention is devoted to the legal framework of the relations between the European Union and its East European neighbours. He has published extensively on the legal framework of EU-Ukraine relations and was the supervisor of a PhD thesis (defended by Guillaume Van der Loo) on ‘The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. A New Legal Instrument for EU Integration Without Membership). He also provided several training sessions for Ukrainian civil servants with respect to the process of legal approximation between the EU and Ukraine. Peter Van Elsuwege closely works together with Prof. Roman Petrov, Jean Monnet Chair in EU law at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla. They have several joint publications, focusing on various aspects of EU-Ukraine relations, and co-organised several workshops and conferences on these topics. Finally, professor Van Elsuwege is promotor of the UGent_Academy4UA, a Jean Monnet module devoted to the development of teaching and research in the field of EU law in Ukraine.