Olena Nikolayenko

Olena Nikolayenko is Professor of Political Science at Fordham University based in New York City, USA. Originally from Ukraine, she received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto and held a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law before joining Fordham. Her research interests include comparative democratization, social movements, and protest behavior, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe. Her recent book examines women’s participation in the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan) in Ukraine. Her research was supported by the American Councils for International Education (Title VIII Research Scholar Program), the American Political Science Association, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Most recently, Dr. Nikolayenko was a visiting scholar at the European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithuania, and the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. At the Center, she will investigate the role of labor in a repressive political regime, focusing on the case of Belarus under Alyaksandr Lukashenka.