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Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies

The Canadian Association for Ukrainian Studies (CAUS) was created on the basis of the Conference on Ukrainian Studies (CUF), which had a long standing relationship with the CAS. A poll—conducted among the CUF in the fall of 2000—resulted in 91.5% of participating respondents voting to create the CAUS as an autonomous affiliate of the CAS. In 2002 there was broad participation by Ukrainianists in numerous panels of the CAS at its annual conference, which was being held at the University of Toronto. During this occasion the CAUS was officially constituted and Roman Senkus (CIUS Toronto Office) was elected its first president.

The official organ of the CAUS is East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, a scholarly, peer-reviewed, online periodical, published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS). EWJUS is an open access journal, so all its publications are available for free and without subscription: https://www.ewjus.com/index.php/ewjus/issue/archive. 

EWJUS succeeds the previously published Journal of Ukrainian Studies, which appeared between 1976 and 2012 under the aegis of the CIUS. 

To join the CAUS, membership in the CAS is required. For more information, see CAS membership page.

 

Current CAUS Executive Committee

President: Andriy Zayarnyuk (U of Winnipeg)
Vice-President: Oksana Dudko (U of Manitoba)
Secretary-Treasurer: Maryna Romanets (UNBC)
Members at Large: Olya Zikrata (SFU), Maria Popova (McGill), Mariya Melentyeva (U of A), Svitlana Krys (MacEwan), Larysa Bilous (CIUS)

The CIUS Director (Natalia Khanenko-Friesen), the Past President (Serhy Yekelchyk), and the Editor of EWJUS (Serhiy Bilenky) serve as ex officio members of the Executive.

Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies
2026 Article Prize announcement

The Professional Awards Committee (Heather Coleman Taras Koznarsky Andrii Krawchuk) is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2026 Article Prize of the Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies is

Dr. Oksana Vynnyk for her article, “‘We swear to fight for the inviolability of the borders of our motherland’: disabled veterans and social welfare in interwar Lviv” [European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 31:2, 223-245]. This committee was impressed by the originality of Vynnyk’s topic, the extent and depth of her research, and the sophistication in navigating a very complex and overlooked area of Ukraine’s history, revealing the significance of welfare policy as an instrument of state-building in the eastern Polish borderlands in the 1920s and 30s.  
 
The committee also awarded an honourable mention to Dr. Oleksandr Pankieiev (University of Alberta) for his article, “Changing motifs in digital folklore characters of the Russo-Ukrainian War” [Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes, 66(3–4), 484–511.  The committee notes the remarkable methodological grounding of the new direction in folklore studies that Pankieiev proposes and his astute investigation of memes that provide evidence of the popular imagination and cultural resilience in Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion.
 
Warmest congratulations to our winners for their marvellous new contributions to our field!
 

Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies
2025 Book Prize announcement

The Professional Affairs Committee of the Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies (Heather Coleman, Taras Koznarsky, and Andrii Krawchuk) are delighted to announce the results of the 2025 CAUS Book Prize competition (postponed to this year).
 
WINNER:  Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel, Russia and Ukraine:  Entangled Histories, Diverging States (Polity Press, 2024).
 
Popova and Shevel identify an escalatory cycle that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In a measured and robust argument, the authors demonstrate how, despite their entangled histories, the two countries interpreted the collapse of the USSR very differently and embarked on separate trajectories: Ukraine toward democratization and a European course, and Russia toward autocracy and re-Sovietization. In a solidly constructed and balanced analysis, the authors make a strong case for the real “root causes” of Russian military aggression, as opposed to Kremlin narratives. They deflate the manufactured platitudes of NATO expansion, and thoughtfully scrutinize the challenges of Ukraine’s fragile democracy. This book is essential reading on the origins and the political dynamics underlying Russia’s war against Ukraine.
 
HONOURABLE MENTION:  Serhiy Bilenky, Laboratory of Modernity:  Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2023).
 
Serhiy Bilenky’s magisterial monograph, Laboratory of Modernity. Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 fills a great gap in Ukrainian historiography (both in Ukrainian and English) by providing an ambitious, multifaceted synthesis of nineteenth-century social history, political and economic developments, urban transformations, and cultural history.  It covers a vast body of resources, paves a way for new research directions, and is destined to become a definitive reference volume for years to come.  The monograph boldly puts Ukraine at the centre of the history of Europe and of European empires and convincingly argues for the importance and distinctiveness of the Ukrainian case in the long nineteenth century.
 

Canadian Association of Ukrainian Studies
2025 Graduate Student Paper Award announcement

The award committee (Jeffrey Stepnisky, Olga Pressitch and Oksana Dudko) are pleased to announce the results of the 2025 Graduate Paper Award competition.
 
Winner: Anna Olenenko, the University of Alberta, for her paper “Rethinking Ecocide: The Russo-Ukrainian War and Its Impact on the Humanities.” The award committee agreed that the paper offers a well developed and clearly articulated argument that addresses an important area of research. It brings Ukrainian studies into conversation with cutting edge issues of broad scholarly importance. 
 
Honorable Mention: Nara Narimanova, the University of Alberta, for her paper “Crimean Tatar Topographic Memory and Resistance to Colonial Erasure.”