Ukraine Calling: A Kaleidoscope from Hromadske Radio 2016–2019

This event will be held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube Live. There will be no in-person event.

Register here for the Zoom webinar, or tune in on YouTube Live.

Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a presentation by Marta Dyczok, Andriy Kulykov, and Oksana Semerchuk about the book Ukraine Calling: A Kaleidoscope from Hromadske Radio 2016–2019 (ibidem Press, 2021).

Meet the creator of Ukraine Calling (the show this book is based on), the Chairperson of Hromadske Radio that aired the podcasts, and one of the show’s hosts.

This book is like a time capsule. It’s a selection of interviews that aired on Hromadske Radio’s (Public Radio Ukraine) Ukraine Calling show. They capture what people were thinking during a critical time in the country’s history, from the July 2016 NATO Summit through to Volodymyr Zelensky’s 2019 landslide election victories. Decision makers, opinion makers, and others commented on events of the day and larger issues from politics to sports, religion, history, war, books, diplomacy, health, business, art and more. Interview guests include Canada’s then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. Writer Andrey Kurkov. Crimean political prisoner Hennadii Afanasiev. UNHRC’s Pablo Mateu. Ethnologist Ihor Poshyvailo. Cameo appearance by Borys Johnson. These interviews provide a unique, kaleidoscopic perspective on Ukraine as it was on the receiving end of a hybrid war from Russia.

SPEAKERS

Marta Dyczok is Associate Professor at the Departments of History and Political Science, Western University, Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, and Adjunct Professor at the National University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Her books include Ukraine’s Euromaidan. Broadcasting through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio (E-IR, 2016), Ukraine Twenty Years After Independence: Assessments, Perspectives, Challenges (Aracne editrice, 2015), Media, Democracy and Freedom. The Post-Communist Experience (Peter Lang, 2009), and The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Her articles have been published in, among others, Europe-Asia Studies, Demokratizatsiya, and Canadian Slavonic Papers. She received her doctorate from Oxford University. She created, produced, and co-hosted Ukraine Calling.

Andriy Kulykov is the Chairperson and Co-founder of Hromadske Radio, and the Head of the Commission of Journalists’ Ethics of Ukraine. One of the leading journalists in Ukraine, he has worked for News from Ukraine, BBC Radio in London, various Ukrainian TV channels including 1+1, STB, and ICTV, where he hosted the award-winning political talk show Svoboda Slova (Freedom of Speech). A graduate of Kyiv University’s Faculty of International Relations and Law, he has lectured at various Ukrainian and international universities including Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, Toronto, and supervises graduate students.

Oksana Smerechuk has a degree in Linguistics from the University of Sydney (Australia). She was a researcher and fixer for CBC News and BBC Newsnight in Moscow in the last years of the USSR, and co-hosted Ukraine Calling. Smerechuk then pioneered Head of State-level Ukrainian-English interpretation and translation for Canada. An active community organizer while living abroad, she has been President of the International Women’s Club of Belgrade and President of the Kyiv Ambassadors’ Spouses Association. She now lives in Toronto and serves on the Board of the youth empowerment charity Help Us Help.