Jessica Zychowicz
Dr. Jessica Zychowicz is an Associate Advisor to the Human Rights in Eurasia graduate certificate. Her areas of expertise include women’s rights and gender equality, peace and conflict, education and culture in Eastern Europe and Eurasia with specialized expertise on Ukraine. Current projects include an edited volume, collaborative research, teaching and practice in these areas.
She is also working on her second book dedicated to a Soviet cultural history involving early perceptions of A.I. in political ideology and dissent, which she began researching in Kyiv on a Fulbright in 2017. Her first book, Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine (U-Toronto Press 2020) is recipient of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies Book Prize (2022); Modern Languages Association Scaglione Prize in Slavic Studies Honorable Mention (2021); and the Omelijan Pritsak ASEEES Prize in Ukrainian Studies Honorable Mention (2022). The book is also published in Polish translation in a newly updated edition by the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw with Karakter Press (2024). A Ukrainian edition is due out on Revolution of Dignity Museum with ArtHuss Press. She is the author of the edited volume Freedom Taking Place: War, Women and Culture at the Intersection of Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus (Vernon Press 2023). This volume features fourteen established scholars from the region writing on women’s rights, protest, and cultural transformation.
She is also the author of numerous articles, chapters, public-facing texts and projects including co-founding the academic Forum for Race & Postcolonialism at the Journal for Ukrainian Politics and Society (JUPS/Harvard). Recent visual projects include contributing research texts and lectures to the Irish Museum of Modern Art international exhibition 100 Years of Self-Determination. In 2022 she co-curated an exhibition of Ukrainian women artists’ works created in response to the ongoing war, as well as a critical exhibition of war photography that has been displayed in multiple countries.
Dr. Zychowicz is currently serving as the Director of Fulbright Ukraine & Institute of International Education Kyiv Office, one of seven international offices on five continents with headquarters in NYC and DC. Prior to this role she was the Contemporary Ukraine Studies Stasiuk Fellow at U-Alberta (2018-2021), a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine (2017-2018), the residential Jacyk Research Fellow at U-Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs (2015-2016), and a residential Research Fellow at Uppsala University at Institute for Russia and East European Studies in Sweden (2019). She has also held the prestigious Community of Scholars residency at Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG). She earned her doctorate in Slavic Languages and Literature and certificates in Digital Humanities and REEES Area Studies from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley. She also served a full term as a Peace Corps TEFL Volunteer to Ukraine 2005-2007. For more information and links to publications: https://www.jes-zychowicz.com/