Nadiia Bureiko
Fellow 2024/2025
Sociology/Political Sciences
Foreign Policy Council ‘Ukrainian Prism’, Kyiv
Open Society University Network/CEU Institute of Advanced Study, Budapest-Ukraine
nadia.bureiko@gmail.com
Bio
Dr. Nadiia Bureiko is the ‘Ukraine Abroad’ Programme Director at the Foreign Policy Council ‘Ukrainian Prism’ (Kyiv). She completed her postdoctoral research at the University of St. Gallen as a Swiss Government Excellence Scholar and held a research fellowship at New Europe College under the Pontica Magna Scholarship. She earned her MA in International Relations and PhD in Political Science at Yurii Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, where she also worked as an assistant in the Department of International Relations.
Dr. Bureiko has published academic articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Europe-Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Eastern Journal of European Studies, and contributed chapters to books published by Routledge and Manchester University Press. Her research focuses on national identity, Ukraine’s foreign policy, and perceptions of a country’s status and image.
She has coordinated and conducted research in international projects funded by the European Commission, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, the Research Council of Norway, the International Visegrad Fund, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, and USAID. Additionally, she is the editor and contributor to policy-oriented analytical reports, including the annual assessment of Ukraine’s foreign policy. Most recently, she conducted research on Ukraine’s image abroad for the Ukrainian Institute.
Dr. Bureiko has presented at international conferences such as ASEEES, ASEN, ASN, EURINT and has given talks in over 20 countries.
Challenged but Never Surrendered: Ukraine’s Image in the External Perceptions
While before the full-scale war Ukraine’s capacity to withstand Russia’s invasion was frequently underestimated with some predicting Kyiv would be captured in a couple of days, Ukraine has shown astute resilience and managed to mobilize global support. This has significantly resulted in improving Ukraine’s image abroad when in 2022, Ukraine ranked 19th out of 121 in the Global Soft Power Index, marking a historic surge in influence. Concurrently, external perceptions of Ukraine still remain often stereotyped by the Russian-driven narratives.
Against this backdrop, the proposed research project explores (1) how Ukraine is perceived abroad and (2) what factors influence these perceptions.
The key argument is that Ukraine’s increased visibility is not only impacted by the ongoing war but has become a result of Ukraine’s synergetic efforts launched before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The project starts from the assumption that a state’s image is a perceptual and social phenomenon and largely hinges on perceptions of a state’s ranking, which in turn, is consistent with the value of various factors. The proposed study will arguably make an important empirical and methodological contribution to the literature on external perceptions. To date, the external perceptions of Ukraine have been captured merely at the level of policy-oriented analysis. Moreover, the case of Ukraine could be instructive particularly today, providing a rich context for testing how the state’s image is projected externally in times of war.