Establishing the Ukrainian Research Group in Education and National Transition

• In Event: Lessons in Resilience: Insights from Ukraine for a Changing Global Higher Education Landscape

Proposal

In early December 2022 during the Covid epidemic, Dr. Olha Poliukhovych, the Vice President for Research and Academic Affairs of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA) in Ukraine, visited Washington, DC and requested a meeting with Professor Streitwieser of the International Education Program at The George Washington University and the director of the Refugee Educational Advancement Laboratory (REAL). In the course of the conversation, their academic backgrounds dovetailed into specific areas of inquiry they shared. In April 2025, Dr. Poliukhovych returned to GW with a larger delegation and GW hosted a public round table for the NaUKMA team and REAL scholars to discuss universities during wartime. That meeting quickly led to the formation of the Ukrainian Research Group in Education and National Transition, or URGENT. Over Summer 2025, the URGENT team grew to 11 members from the Ukrainian and US side and the plan was made to formulate a proposal to the Ukrainian Institute’s Lysiak-Rudnytsky’s Ukrainian Studies program.

Phase 1 is the research component, which will be run by the NaUKMA team and study how Ukrainian universities have demonstrated resilience and adapted their operations for survival under Russia’s full-scale invasion since 2022. The team will conduct interviews with students and administrators at NaUKMA and other Ukrainian institutions and analyze what make up key dimensions of institutional resilience during war. These include relocation to safer regions within the country; international support; students' mobility; and innovations like digitalization and distance education in times of crisis. The findings from the case studies feed directly into the second phase of our project. In Phase 2, the US team will manage a new virtual course, “Education and Resilience: Ukraine, the United States, and Countries in Transition,” for The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development. This team taught course will include the full URGENT team along with invited guest speakers from other crisis regions around the globe who can shed further light on educational resilience. In Phase 3, the full team will organize public events and workshops to reflect on the lessons learned from the research study and the course, and to share their course for wider institutional use.

By developing, teaching, and openly sharing good practices, URGENT seeks to equip the academic community and decision makers writ large in conflict-affected or high-risk environments with practical strategies for resilience and adaptation. Our project seeks to strengthen an international academic network that can be more collaborative, informed, and resilient to external shocks. We seek to share our scholarly publications at international academic conferences and in global higher education journals and media outlets. URGENT is the first of its kind US-Ukrainian research group on Ukraine’s higher education in times of crisis. Understanding what Ukraine is going through and learning from it is increasingly critical for other countries also undergoing transition.

Author

• Bernhard T Streitwieser, George Washington University