Competitors during the 27th Ukrainian Firefighting Championship in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Photo by Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Barcroft Media/Getty Images.
About the Authors
Valentyna Romanova holds a BA, MA and PhD in political science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She has more than 10 years of professional experience in academia and think-tanks, with a focus on territorial politics, regional policy and multi-level governance. She works as a senior consultant for the Department of Regional Policy at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, and teaches within a joint German–Ukrainian MA programme on German and European studies at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Previously, on a Chevening scholarship, she conducted research on the ‘regional dimension of European integration and good governance regarding regional differences’. On a Marie Curie fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, she researched territorial politics in Ukraine during the transition from authoritarian rule. She is a co-editor of the ‘Annual Review of Regional Elections’ in the journal Regional and Federal Studies. Her research output is published in international peer-reviewed journals and academic books.
Andreas Umland, CertTransl (Leipzig), AM (Stanford), MPhil (Oxford), DipPolSci, DrPhil (FU Berlin), PhD (Cambridge), has held fellowships and lectureships at the Hoover Institution, Harvard University, St Antony’s College Oxford, Urals State University, Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Catholic University of Eichstaett and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Since 2014, he has been a research fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, and since 2019 a senior non-resident fellow at the Centre for European Security of the Institute of International Relations in Prague. He is the general editor of the book series ‘Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society’ and ‘Ukrainian Voices’, as well as a member of the boards of directors/editors of the web journal Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul’tury, the International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies, the NGO Kyiv Dialogue, the Boris Nemtsov Academic Centre for the Study of Russia at Charles University of Prague, the book series ‘Explorations of the Far Right’, Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, the Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, and The Ideology and Politics Journal.