Nataliia Kovtoniuk, Ph.D.

Summer Semester 2022

Nataliia Kovtoniuk is a visiting research fellow in the field of excellence, spending summer semester 2022 in Graz. She is an Assistant Professor at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (foreign expert), and previously worked as a teacher of the Ukrainian language and literature in private schools in Ukraine. She holds a P.h.D in Ukrainian literature. Nataliia defended her Ph.D. dissertation “Postcolonial interpretation of the discourse of the Revolution of Dignity” which is the first attempt to research into the literature on the Revolution of Dignity concerning other artistic (painting, street art, music, performances), non-artistic (publicistic writing, radio marathons, interviews, the content of social networking sites) and related spheres (projects on oral history, a pastiche of historical narrative, post folklore, blogging) in the light of postcolonial studies. 

In her research, Nataliia articulates the relations between the Russian nation and the Ukrainian nation in the terms of metropolis and colony. Her main research interests include postcolonialism, the colonization of Ukraine by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and its effect on Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian national identity. Perceiving literature as a part of the discourse of the society and a powerful tool for creating, transmitting, and spreading ideology and socially relevant narratives Nataliia investigates how literature is used to maintain the power of empire and create an imperialistic, colonial, anti-colonial, and postcolonial picture of the world.