Ms. Galyna Kutsovska

Professional Background

Galyna Kutsovska is a PhD candidate in history at Uppsala University in Sweden. Ms. Kutsovska received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Philology, Languages and Literature from the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and a Master’s degree in Ethnic and Migration Studies from Linköping University. Ms. Kutsovska's master's thesis, “Memorializing Babyn Yar: Politics of Memory and Commemoration of the Holocaust in Ukraine,” won an award through the "Preserving Holocaust Memory" competition organized by the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, with support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Kyiv City State Administration.

While pursuing her graduate studies, Ms. Kutsovska was awarded a Visiting Student Fellowship at the University of Toronto during 2018-2019. Additionally, she participated in the 2019 Holocaust Studies Summer Program, which was jointly organized by The Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiva, and attended the Bergen-Belsen International Summer School in Germany in the same year. Ms. Kutsovska was additionally engaged in a Swedish research project on the memory of the Maidan Revolution and the creation of the Maidan Museum in Kyiv.

Ms. Kutsovska was awarded grants from the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union at Yad Vashem, an Erasmus scholarship, and the Anna Maria Lundins Stipendiefond to support her doctoral research. In addition, she has served on several academic councils at Uppsala University, including the faculty board, Committee for Doctoral Education, Advisory Board for Research, and Uppsala Forum on Democracy, Peace, and Justice. Kutsovska has language skills in Ukrainian, Russian, English, French, German, and Swedish.

Fellowship Research

Galyna Kutsovska was awarded the Sosland Foundation Fellowship for her research project, “Holocaust in Kharkiv Oblast: Life and Death of Ukrainian Jews, 1941-1943” for work on her dissertation, which investigates the Holocaust and mass violence during Nazi-occupied Kharkiv oblast from 1941 to 1943. She seeks to analyze the forms and social dynamics of violence in the region that accompanied the German invasion, focusing on Jewish victims. Ms. Kutsovska is interested in the survival strategies of Jews and particularly how they utilized various resources and adopted behaviors to avoid victimization. Her project also seeks to explore the use of violence and its impact on Jewish and “peaceful Soviet citizens” who were subjected to it. Kutsovska’s research argues that the Holocaust in Kharkiv requires a broader understanding of the Nazi occupation, as it shaped the interactions between perpetrators, bystanders, and victims. By placing the Holocaust within the context of war and occupation, she aims to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of how genocidal and non-genocidal violent practices influenced one another.

This fellowship affords Ms. Kutsovska access to extensive collections at the Museum, including the Ukrainian postwar trials of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU); sources from the Kharkiv Oblast Archive and the State Archives of the Public Organizations of Ukraine; records from the Russian archives of the KGB, State Archives of the Russian Federation, and Red (Soviet) Army; and German records of Nationalist Socialist Crimes held by the USHMM. Furthermore, she will have access to written personal testimonies and oral history interviews of the survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and the occupation of the Kharkiv region in Ukraine.

Residency Period: October 1, 2023–May 31, 2024