Working on the Dissertation Research at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

In November 2025, Liana Blikharska, a historian and researcher at the Center, spent a month at the Imre Kertész College at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. At the institute, which specializes in the study of the history, culture, and societies of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, she had the opportunity to work on her dissertation research "An Intellectual Biography of Ivan Krypiakevych (1886-1967)."

The presentation and discussion of her work at the research seminar, joint discussions, access to the university library, and conversations over coffee or lunch helped her write the third chapter of her dissertation, and inspired her to formulate new research questions and improve the structure of the following chapters. During the weekend, she had the opportunity to see her historian friends in Münster and at the Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Not only days, but also evenings are full in the old university city of Jena, where Monday afternoon seminars were supplemented by discussion panels and Polish film screenings. 

Thinking and writing in a community of colleagues among the Jena hills was made possible by a scholarship from the German-Ukrainian University Network/Deutsch-Ukrainisches Hochschulnetzwerk (DUHN). This program, which aims to strengthen cooperation between German and Ukrainian higher education institutions, allowed Liana, a PhD student at the Faculty of Humanities of the Ukrainian Catholic University, to work not only with German historians from the Universities of Jena and Bielefeld, but also with colleagues from Ivan Franko University of Lviv and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Credits

Cover Image: photo from the website of Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Gallery: photos provided by Liana Blikharska