Senior Lecturer at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service Welcomed to FSU by Ukraine Task Force

Tallahassee, FL – Florida State University's Ukraine Task Force (UTF) and the Center for Global Engagement welcomed Kateryna Shynkaruk to campus as part of the Engage Your World Speaker Series. 

Shynkaruk, a senior lecturer at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington DC and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializes in Eastern European Politics, European Security and International Relations Theory. During her visit, she spoke with two classes and held a lecture at The Globe Auditorium.

"My lecture was about European security and how it is affected by the Ukraine war and basically how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has completely overturned the European security architecture,” Shynkaruk said. “I thoroughly enjoyed the questions and answer session with students. They clearly were engaged and I was positively impressed by how closely they followed it." 

Shynkaruk has published over 30 articles on the topics of post-communist transformations in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe. She spent seven years working as a political analyst at the US Embassy in Ukraine and six years covering Ukraine's foreign and security policy as a senior research fellow at the Kyiv-based Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting. Shynkaruk was grateful to be able to share her knowledge gained from these experiences with faculty, staff and students.

"My hope is that there is this interest actually in the European affairs, that it is strengthened through engagements like my visit and generally that there is more interest in Ukraine, in European security and European affairs built here among students," Shynkaruk said. "My meetings with faculty members were another very positive experience, seeing how the faculty is interested in exposing more perspectives on European affairs. If I have inspired any of them (students) to follow our potential avenues that I mentioned, that would be an amazing outcome."

One of the goals of the UTF is to reach FSU students and educate them about Ukraine, its current and historical relationships with Europe and Russia, and its relevance to American security and economic interests. In 2025 alone, the UTF hosted 21 Ukrainian visitors and offered 17 educational events.

"I was hosted graciously by the Ukraine Task Force here at FSU. I was positively impressed by the work they're doing," Shynkaruk said. "When teaching students, I do believe that direct information is always better than interpretations through second and third-hand perspectives. So, whenever you have a Ukrainian expert or a Ukrainian coming from Ukraine at the table in the classroom, you will have students exposed to a real-life experience and perspective rather than reading about it.

“And I know that you have visitors regularly, this was really impressive. The work they (the UTF) are doing and the fact that they also bring people from Ukraine directly, some cultural presence, some academic presence, there is no better way to learn than to learn from the perspective of the ground. The resilience of Ukrainian people, the challenges, the political landscape, all these pros and cons. If you don't have a Ukrainian at the table, then this is an abstract conversation.”

LSI strives to lead the way in creating innovative educational solutions that seamlessly connect theory with practice. Through advanced research, we develop industry-leading methods and implementation strategies to enhance systematic learning at all levels and in all environments. For more than five decades, LSI has been committed to driving measurable improvements in the performance of both individuals and organizations.

For more information about the UTF, visit the UTF webpage on LSI’s website. To learn more about FSU’s global footprint, visit global.fsu.edu.