Year in Program: Sixth
Committee: Dr. Matthew Pauly (chair), Dr. Ronen Steinberg, Dr. Amy Simon, Dr. Aminda Smith
Research Languages: Ukrainian and Russian
Educational Background: Master of Arts (M.A.) in History (2014), University of Northern Colorado; Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in History and minor in English (2012), University of Northern Colorado
Email: vsetecka@msu.edu
I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University where I trained in the fields of Modern European history (with a specialty in east European, Soviet, and Ukrainian history), global communism, and violence and memory studies. In general terms, my current work seeks to understand how people make sense of tragedies and come to terms with difficult pasts.
My project, (tentatively entitled) “In the Aftermath of Hunger: Rupture, Response, and Retribution in Soviet Ukraine, 1933-1947,” is a historical case study of both the immediate implications and longer-term effects of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine (Holodomor), and it seeks to understand how the famine continued to impact, influence, and shape lives and life trajectories well after starvation officially came to an end. I examine how survivors dealt with the aftermath of the famine and attempted to understand it, the ways in which authorities, state institutions, and international actors responded to, and managed, various problems caused by the famine’s disruption, and how a third famine in 1946-1947 came to represent a continuum of hunger and starvation in Soviet Ukraine. My research and teaching examine Ukraine through local, national, and international lenses that integrate Ukraine into broader discussions of European, Global, Soviet, and World histories.
During the 2021-2022 academic year, I was on a Fulbright grant to Kyiv, Ukraine where I conducted research for my dissertation before being evacuated to Warsaw, Poland due to Russia’s war on Ukraine. While there, I became involved with humanitarian work that assisted refugees who fled to Poland from Ukraine. Although I returned to the U.S. in spring 2022, I am still involved in humanitarian aid and refugee assistance, and I serve as an Academic Advisor for the Ukraine Relief Project team at forPeace.
In addition to my research, I am also the founder and current co-editor of H-Ukraine, part of the larger H-Net platform. H-Ukraine is a website and digital humanities initiative dedicated to promoting scholarly and intellectual content related to the study of Ukraine. In addition to publishing calls for papers, conference announcements, jobs, and teaching resources, we also publish book reviews, author interviews, and blog posts from scholars working in the field. You can find more about H-Ukraine here.
I welcome contact from those who have questions about graduate school, history as a discipline, and/or Michigan State University as a whole.