History

General Information

The Kyiv-Mohyla Department of History was established on January 13th 1993. This date is our Birthday and a traditional celebration is held every year.

The Department haw two profiles – History and Archeology. Bachelor and Master programs are offered in both of these specializations. Besides that we offer a PhD Program in History, which is provided in accordance with the international standards for PhD level since 2016.

In 2010 the Department has made a partnership agreement with the Center of Eastern European Studies of the Warsaw University. Since then we are also offering a common Master Program in Ukrainian and Polish Studies with a double accreditation diploma. It gives the students a great opportunity to widen their research perspectives, to get a notion of two different educational and scientific traditions, and to master the academic style of three languages – Ukrainian, Polish and English.

The Department has several major fields of scientific development:

• History of Ukraine
• History of Central and Eastern Europe
• Comparative History of Sates and Their Political Development
• Theory and Methodology of a Historical Research
• Problems of a National History in the Global Context

Besides that there is a number of research groups at the Department, such as:

• The Club of Social and Cultural History of Early-Modern Ukraine (headed by Prof. Natalia Iakovenko)
• The School of National History in Global Comparative History of State-Building (headed by Prof. Mykhailo Kirsenko)
• The Center for Innovations in Historical Research, Education and International Scholarly Partnership (headed by Prof. Natalia Shlikhta, the current Head of Department)

Our professors are not only lecturers and teachers for the students – they also function as personal mentors. This approach is one of the key ways in which our Department combines education with a serious scientific work. Our students are treated as the young scholars already at the 2nd year of their Bachelor studies: they write their first original academic papers with the help of an attentive personal supervisor, they start publishing in the scientific periodicals and participating in multiple seminars and conferences (including international ones) early on, and their Diploma Theses are already on the level of good academic papers.

The mandatory courses at the Department cover such basic topics as:

• political and cultural history of Ukraine
• political, social and cultural development of the all states that used to own Ukrainian territories (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian Empire, Hapsburg Monarchy, USSR)
• main trends in the evolution of European political, social and cultural history and the place of Ukrainian people in those
• basics of the historical research methodology (critical historiography, methods of the work with different historical sources, academic writing and ability to form an original professional approach)

Besides that the Department offers a wide range of elective courses and several certificate programs.