President / Professor Natalia Chaban
Professor Chaban of the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, is a Director of the UC research centre Public Diplomacy and Political Communication Forum and a founding co-editor of Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies (with Scopus). Professor Chaban focuses her interdisciplinary research on cognitive and semiotic aspects of political and media discourses, image and perceptions studies within the EU and IR contexts, and public diplomacy and political communication. Natalia widely publishes including articles in high impact journals (e.g. Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Integration, Cooperation and Conflict, European Security, and others), She is a leader of a number of transnational research projects supported by the European Commission, EU member states and NATO. In 2023-2026, she leads Work Package 5 “Strategic Communication” within a Jean Monnet Policy Network “Challenges and opportunities of EU heritage diplomacy in Ukraine”. In 2024, Professor Chaban was awarded the Mason Durie Medal by the New Zealand Royal Social (this medal is awarded to the nation’s preeminent social scientists).
Contact email: natalia.chaban@canterbury.ac.nz
Vice President / Associate Professor Alessandro Achilli
Alessandro Achilli is an Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Cagliari, Italy. Between 2017 and 2020 he was a Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at Monash University. His main area of research is modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature, with particular attention to poetry. His publications include a monograph on Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus (2018) and many scholarly articles and chapters on Ukrainian and Belarusian culture, comparative literature, and contemporary poetry. He is also active as a literary translator.
Contact email: alessandro.achilli@unica.it
Web Master / Mr Andrew Radion
Andrew Radion is a civil engineer but also an alumnus of the Ukrainian Studies program at Monash University. He is active in the Ukrainian Community in Melbourne.
Contact email: andrewradion@hotmail.com
Executive Member / Dr Olga Boichak
Dr Olga Boichak is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures and the Director of the Computational Social Science Lab in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She is a sociologist researching the role of information and communication technologies in shaping public perception and outcomes of wars. her specific interest is in non-Western and post-colonial contexts, such as that of Ukraine. She is the author of over 30 research articles that lay the groundwork for new directions in the studies of peace and conflict, particularly in the areas of participatory war, influence operations, digital humanitarianism, and open-source intelligence. Dr Boichak is the recipient of the 2024 Max Crawford Medal (Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the Humanities). Currently, she is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow working on a project that maps colonial topographies of digital sovereignty, as well as chief investigator on a suite of research projects that explore digital and social media in a geopolitical context. She serves as Director of the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia and is on the list of prominent Australians personally sanctioned by the Kremlin.
Contact email: olga.boichak@sydney.edu.au
Secretary-Treasurer (shared role) / Dr Iryna Skubii
Dr Skubii is the inaugural Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Melbourne. She holds a PhD in History from Queen’s University at Kingston and a Candidate of Science Degree in History from V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. She taught in Ukraine and Canada and held visiting positions in Germany, Poland, Austria, and Canada. Dr Skubii’s research delves into the intersections of famines history, economic history, material culture history, food history, and environmental and animal studies. Currently, she works on the multidisciplinary project examining the history of sunflowers in Ukraine and lead two projects on the history of the Ukrainian community in Australia. Her first monograph, Trade in Kharkiv in the Years of NEP: Economy and Everyday Life (Kharkiv: Rarytety Ukrainy, 2017). For more on Dr Skubii’s research and publications, see her website: https://irynaskubii.com/
Contact email: usaanz.association@gmail.com / iryna.skubii@unimelb.edu.au
Secretary-Treasurer (shared role) / Dr Olga Maxwell
Dr Olga Maxwell is a Senior Lecturer in ESL and Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association. An applied linguist and phonetician with expertise in bilingualism, laboratory phonology, and world Englishes, her research examines language variation and the impact of mobility and language contact, with a particular focus on prosody. She is internationally recognised for her work on English varieties in multilingual settings, including diaspora communities. Dr Maxwell’s current major projects include an investigation of prosodic variation in Indian English(es), a phonetic study of contemporary Ukrainian speech and an interdisciplinary investigation into language, trauma, and identity among war-displaced Ukrainians in Australia. Drawing on her research, she produced the podcast episode “The Politics of Language in Wartime Ukraine” (https://rss.com/podcasts/the-secret-life-of-language/1346540/) and has also written for broader audiences on topics such as bilingualism and Ukraine’s complex linguistic landscape.
Contact email: usaanz.association@gmail.com / omaxwell@unimelb.edu.au
Executive Member / Emeritus Professor Marko Pavlyshyn
Marko Pavlyshyn is Emeritus Professor of Ukrainian Studies at Monash University. He is the author of Ukrainian Literature: A Wartime Guide for Anglophone Readers (Cambridge UP, 2025), Ol’ha Kobylianska: Interpretations (Kharkiv, 2008), Canon and Iconostasis (Kyiv, 1997), and of more than 100 chapters and articles, mainly on modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature and post-colonial approaches to its analysis. In 1983-2019 he taught Ukrainian language and literature at Monash University. He was the founding president of the Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia (1990-1998). Marko Pavlyshyn is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Contact email: marko.pavlyshyn@monash.edu
General inquiry: usaanz.association@gmail.com
