The Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, and the Department of Religious Studies are pleased to announce that Ukrainian journalist Anna Romandash will be coming to campus this fall and reporting from the war in Ukraine in a special series of programs. Students, faculty, staff and the greater community will have access to the most current developments in Ukraine and along its borders as Ms. Romandash collects evidence and testimonies from victims of the Russian attack, occupation and war crimes. We will have the opportunity to learn directly about events on the ground in Ukraine as well as support the effort to pursue justice and end Putin’s invasion.
Anna Romandash is an award-winning journalist from Ukraine with extensive experience in Europe, the Middle East, and USA. She has contributed her research to Freedom House, Deutsche Welle, US Embassies, the ICJ and the Council of Europe, and held fellowships at CNN and other international news organizations.
Ms. Romandash works closely with youth on freedom movements, journalism and media training for an EU-wide consortium of universities reaching more than 55,000 students. She has completed two masters degrees, one in global affairs and international peace studies at University of Notre Dame, and a second in media communications at Ukrainian Catholic University and received honors for her bachelor of arts degree at Lviv National University. Besides fluency in Russian and Ukrainian, Anna speaks English, Spanish, French and Polish.
Ms. Romandash was named Media Freedom Ambassador of Ukraine for her human rights and media coverage and was one of the winners of the European Institute of Mediterranean literary contest for her reporting. She has been recognized for her creative approaches and crowd-funded initiatives, for example developing comic book formats to explain the threats to media freedom, collaborating with artists and media professionals from 20 countries.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Anna began writing about the situation in her home country. She has written stories about survivors of Russian-made massacres in Northern Ukraine, the drama of internally displaced people and refugees forced to flee their homes, and volunteers helping others in times of need. She is a part of an investigative team collecting data on human rights violations and crimes against humanity during the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Anna is interested in audio storytelling and long-reads; she enjoys working on feature stories that embed and localize the readers in the reality told through the eyes of the protagonists. Anna is the laureate of the Literary Reportages Award “Samovydets” from the Tempora Publishing House as her stories were named among the best reportages in Ukrainian in 2020 and 2021. Ms. Romandash will be a featured speaker at the Athens Democracy Forum sponsored by the New York Times, https://www.athensdemocracyforum.com/speakers-moderators/anna-romandash/
We are delighted that Anna will join us this semester in a hybrid program of on-campus presentations and Zoom-ins from Ukraine. She will be visiting three courses, giving an Ath presentation, Zooming in for lunchtime reports bimonthly on Tuesdays, mentoring students, participating in a Saturday salon meeting sponsored by the Open Academy, and publishing articles on our Center’s websites and newsletters.
Her first visit to campus will be the week of September 12th, with subsequent visits planned for the week of October 24th, and for late November/early December. Please check our website for a line-up of Anna’s events this fall.