Galyna Ivanivna Zelenko

Director of the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Political Science, Professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Halyna Zelenko graduated with distinction from the Faculty of History of the M. P. Drahomanov Kyiv State Pedagogical University. In 2001, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and defended her PhD dissertation, Ukraine–Poland: Models of Political Modernization (specialty 23.00.02 – Political Institutions and Processes). In 2007, she defended her Doctor of Political Science dissertation, The Institutionalization of Civil Society in Post-Socialist Countries: The Cases of Ukraine and the Visegrad Group States (specialty 23.00.02 – Political Institutions and Processes). She was awarded the academic title of Professor in 2014.

She has been affiliated with the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since 2000, progressing through every research position from Junior Research Fellow to Chief Research Fellow. Since 2019, she has headed the Department of Political Institutions and Processes, served as Deputy Director for Research from 2025, and was elected Director of the Institute in June 2026. She is a member of the Institute’s Academic Council, Deputy Chair of the Institute’s Specialized Academic Councils for Dissertation Defense, and a member of the Specialized Academic Council at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

Professor Zelenko serves as Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal Political Studies (Politychni Doslidzhennia), which ranked first among Ukrainian political science journals following the 2026 state evaluation of academic periodicals. She is also a member of the editorial boards of several Ukrainian and international scholarly journals.

She has been a member of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) since 2008, serves as a member of the IPSA Council representing the Ukrainian Political Science Association, and is the First Vice President of the Ukrainian Political Science Association.

She has completed research fellowships at the University of Warsaw (2001, 2018), the Central European University (2004), the Institute of Political Science of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (2005), the European Parliament (2007), and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, as well as other research institutions (2025). She has led and participated in numerous international research projects supported by the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Erasmus+ Programme, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland, and other international partners.

Professor Zelenko has participated in more than one hundred prestigious international academic events, including six World Congresses of the International Political Science Association (IPSA): Montreal (2014), Brisbane (2018), Lisbon (2021), Buenos Aires (2023), Seoul (2025), and Poznań (2026). She has also presented her research at leading international conferences, including those of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), the Lennart Meri Conference, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and other scholarly associations focusing on Central and Eastern Europe.

She is the author, co-author, and scientific editor of more than fifty monographs and numerous articles published in leading Ukrainian and international academic journals. Her publications include The Political System of Post-Soviet Ukraine: Constitutional Ramifications, Key Institutions, and Political Practices of the Independent Ukrainian State, 1991–2023 (ibidem Press, 2026); Crises of Political Development in Ukraine: The Challenges of Post-Soviet State-Building and Ways to Overcome Them (ibidem Press, 2024); FAKE RUSSIA: Investigations into Moscow’s Imitations of Greatness and Power (ibidem Press, 2025); Institutional (In)Capacity of the State: How to Break the Vicious Circle (2025); Political System of Post-Soviet Ukraine (ibidem Press, 2026); Ukraine at War: War and the Transformation of the State; Political Regime Change and Prospects for Strengthening Democracy in Ukraine (2021); as well as the single-authored monographs Catching-up Modernization: The Experience of Poland and Ukraine (2003) and The Political Matrix of Civil Society (2007).

She is the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Award for Young Scientists for the Best Research Publication (2004) for her monograph Catching-up Modernization: The Experience of Poland and Ukraine. She has also received the NAS of Ukraine distinctions For Professional Achievements (2016) and For Training the Next Generation of Researchers (2021).

From 2005 to 2016, Professor Zelenko concurrently served as Associate Professor and later Professor at the Department of Political Science of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She currently lectures in the doctoral programme at the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, where she teaches the course Theory and Practice of Political Processes.

She has supervised nine PhD dissertations in Political Science.

Professor Zelenko actively promotes the Institute’s research findings through public engagement, regularly appears as an expert in leading Ukrainian and international media outlets, and is the author of numerous scholarly and public affairs publications.

Research interests: democratization; political transformations in post-communist countries; state institutional capacity; parliamentarism; systems of checks and balances; civil society institutions; political participation; institutional trust; and the impact of exogenous factors on political development.