Prof. Dr. Olena Nikolayenko

Invisible Revolutionaries: Women’s Participation in the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine

At LMU, Prof. Nikolayenko will work upon her current book project, tentatively titled Invisible Revolutionaries: Women’s Participation in the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. The project seeks to answer three interrelated questions: (1) Why did women participate in the revolution? (2) Which roles did women assume over the course of mass mobilization? and (3) What were gender outcomes of the revolution? This study contributes to existing literature on modern European history by tracing women’s engagement in an urban revolution and thus providing a more inclusive account of mass mobilization in Eastern Europe.

Biographical Note

Olena Nikolayenko is Professor of Political Science at Fordham University in New York, USA and an Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto (Canada) and held visiting appointments at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University, and the Department of Sociology at the National University of Kyiv–Mohyla Academy, Ukraine. Her research interests include comparative democratization, contentious politics, women’s activism, and youth, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. Her recent book, Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press 2017), examined tactical interactions between nonviolent youth movements and incumbent governments in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Recent Publications:

“Invisible Revolutionaries: Women’s Participation in the Revolution of Dignity.” Comparative Politics 52, no. 3 (2020): 451–472

“The Significance of Human Dignity for Social Movements: Mass Mobilization in Ukraine.” East European Politics 36, no. 3 (2020): 445–462

“Framing and Counterframing a Peace March in Russia: The Use of Twitter during a Hybrid War.” Social Movement Studies 18, no. 5 (2019): 602–621

“Why Women Protest: Insights from Ukraine’s EuroMaidan.” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 726–751, co-authored with Maria DeCasper

“Youth Movements and Elections in Belarus.” Europe-Asia Studies 67, no. 3 (2015): 468–492