CrimSL welcomes Ivanna Burdun and Anastasiia Opria as visiting undergraduate researchers until March 2025 taking part in the Mitacs Globalink Research Award - for research in Canada through the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
Their research project is entitled Civilian involvement in national security as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
They will be co-supervised at CrimSL by Professor Matthew Light and Professor Scot Wortley.
Ivanna Burdun was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and is currently a third year public policy undergraduate student at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Ivanna studied digital democracy as an Erasmus student at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. She also studied Black Sea security at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Türkiye.
Security has become her minor, and she plans to continue her studies in this area during her research internship at the University of Toronto.
Anastasiia and I met during our Erasmus in Germany, and we've been friends and colleagues since. When she proposed to go on MITACS programme, it was an easy choice since I know our interests align and we work well together -- something I hope Professor Light would also confirm.
- Ivanna Burdun
Anastasiia Opria was born in Bila Tserkva, close to Kyiv, in Ukraine.
She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student in the "International relations, social communications and regional studies" program at the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
During her studies she has taken part in academic exchange programs. At the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt Oder (Germany), she focused on social media in the context of broader studies of democracy, political parties and gender. Here at the University of Toronto, where she studied for two semesters last year, her studies included public opinion research, US foreign policy and international law.
Ivanna and I met during our exchange program in Germany and have quite soon become best friends (which we remain to this day, but now our status has expanded to colleagues as well). When I saw the opportunity to apply to MITACS, I knew Ivanna would be the perfect partner for it because we work really well together and our research interests align.
I was lucky to meet Professor Matthew Light during one of the several lectures I and other Ukrainian students at U of T organized last year. I am excited to collaborate with Professor Wortley and Professor Light during our MITACS project and believe that this work will make a decent contribution to the existing research in the field of national security and Russian-Ukrainian war studies.
- Anastasiia Opria
Ivanna and Anastasiia will be sharing office space in the Rare Books Room in the CrimSL library.
Please give them a warm CrimSL welcome!