Can you tell us about your scientific background and your arrival at UGA?

I am from an academic family. My two grand-parents were the members of the Academy of Sciences and my dad is a radio-physicist who worked at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. I myself graduated from it in 1989. I defended my PhD paper in 2000 and my Full-Professor’s paper in 2012. All my life I have been the member of the staff of the Department of English Philology in this University. First, as a lecturer, then as an Associate Professor and then as a Full Professor. I am an author of 9 personal and collective monographs, dozens of textbooks and more than 250 scientific papers.

Presently, I arrived in Grenoble in August 2022. The Pause grant started in February 2023. My GATES projects will start in February 2026 and will last till the end of June.
 

Your academic freedom has been threatened. Can you explain why?

I am from Kharkiv, my city was severely shelled and bombed from the very first minutes of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Presently, the city, as a front-line zone, experiences about 5-6 air raids during days and nights that may last for 4-5 hours. My parents are about 90 years old. They were not able to go to the shelter, so we had to stay under the enemy’s fire during the raids. We live on the top floor that makes the risk even higher. Lots of my colleagues lost their homes and relatives in the city. Our university was attacked more than once, some buildings of the university are razed to the ground.
 

You have been awarded two grants, one from the Pause Programme and the other one from the GATES programme. How did you manage to secure these grants?

I just did my best ! Seriously, there may be several factors that influenced this. Firstly, it is the sphere of my focus. It is cognitive semiotic aspect of counter-propaganda, memetics, and information warfare during war. In humanities nowadays, nothing seems to be more topical than that. Secondly, I am honored to belong to one of the strongest cognitive schools in my country. And thirdly, everywhere in France I met wonderful people with great compassion and commitment to science.

What is your current research focusing on?

I focus on information warfare in the media and memetics. My GATES project will be concentrated on creating the corpus of Ukrainian war memes that will be attributed in terms of their cognitive and semiotic value. In this project, I will have a partner from Harvard Library (project SUCHO – Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage), who has already compiled a corpus of more than 9, 000 memes. My corpus is much smaller but it is different. We will try and align our efforts.

How did you settle into the scientific community at the Université Grenoble Alpes?

ILCEA4 opened the doors for me as soon as I arrived even before I became the formal PAUSE laureate. They let me share the project plans that I further implemented in my project. In this Institution, I have a wonderful supervisor, a person of great heart, Prof. Caroline Rossi, who initially invited me to Grenoble to start my PAUSE project in 2022. She was and is my guide among the academics and projects here. Due to her, I already have a lot of friends here and other cities in France. Besides, I still work online at my University in Kharkiv, and due to the specific conditions in the city, our academic loading is times bigger than that in the universities in France. My students are located all over the world. They need much more attention and care than usual. This keeps me online with my Department and students almost around the clock 7 days a week.

What are your plans for the future?

You know, the war taught me, among lots of other things, not to plan much. The situation in the world is so unstable that planning sometimes looks rather senseless. Of course, I am craving for my home, my colleagues, who are now scattered all over the world. The time will give the answer. (By the way, my Full Professor’s paper and two monographs were dedicated to the concept of Time). So, I am entitled to know, it definitely will.