Europe’s Futures is ERSTE Foundation’s partnership initiative with the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. In a rapidly changing global environment it aims to understand and address the challenges confronting Europe and the European Union. At the core of the program are the issues of democracy, the rule of law, migration dynamics and further enlargement of the EU as well as other internal and external issues. The sixth cohort of Europe’s Futures Fellows in the academic 2023/24 is comprised of eight prominent experts who will present their research in presentations and public events throughout the month of September.

The first discussion is with Hanna Shelest and will focus on Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has prompted the need to wholly rethink and revise European strategies and policies. A broad spectrum of aspects playing into today’s situation will be assessed, with an emphasis on contextualizing reactions of politicians in Europe to the unprompted Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 with respect to their position on the political spectrum.

Hanna Shelest, PhD, is the Director of Security Programmes at the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism” and Editor-in-chief at UA: Ukraine Analytica. Dr Shelest also is a non-resident senior fellow at CEPA (US). Before this, she had served for more than ten years as a Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine. In 2014, Dr Shelest was a Visiting Research Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Dr Shelest has been a guest lecturer for the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Swedish Defence University, Ukrainian Catholic University, National Defence College of the UAE, NATO Defence College, World Economic Forum, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, etc. Dr Shelest was an adviser of the Working Group preparing Ukrainian Navy Strategy 2035 and was involved in working groups developing the Foreign Policy Strategy of Ukraine, Asian Strategy for MFA, and Ukraine’s NATO Public Communication Strategy.

Ivan Vejvoda, IWM Permanent Fellow and head of Europe’s Futures program, will host and moderate the event.

Event registration: Europe’s Futures Colloquium with Hanna Shelest | IWM

Cover picture: Ukrainian and EU Flags, Dusan_Cvetanovic from Pixabay