As Co-President, I (Bill Dutton) am delighted to welcome Dr. Yevheniia Polishchuk to The Portulans Institute as a Fellow. We look forward to her contributions to our Ukraine Case Studies, and to the Institute’s ongoing commitment to supporting the Ukrainian Science Diaspora, which Dr. Polishchuk co-founded.
 
Dr. Polishchuk’s appointment grew from shared interests and a fortunate encounter. I (Bill) first met Yevheniia in Gdańsk, Poland, at a Young Network Trans-Europe conference in 2024. We quite literally ran into each other while searching for the opening ceremony at the historic Lenin Shipyard — where Lech Wałęsa organised Solidarity (and later became President of Poland in 1990). Together we found the venue and enjoyed a concert by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra.
 
In the year that followed, I served as a mentor to Yevheniia during her staying at Krakow Economic University and Fulbright Research Fellowship at MIT’s Cryptoeconomics Lab. This mentoring relationship was facilitated by the UK-Ukraine Academic Twinning initiative at the University of Liverpool, where a subsequent conference helped me envision a role for The Portulans Institute in supporting the Ukrainian Science Diaspora.
 
She is the Co-Founder of the Ukrainian Science Diaspora, an international platform that is already connecting over 400 scholars and 17 diaspora research organizations across 15 countries with academic institutions and policy stakeholders in Ukraine and globally.
 
Dr. Polishchuk is an internationally engaged scholar specializing in finance, fintech, innovation, and economic resilience, with academic affiliations at Kyiv National Economic University and Krakow Economic University. She holds doctoral degrees from Kyiv National Economic University and Chernihiv National Polytechnic University and has taught at universities in Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.
 
As an independent expert, Yevheniia Polishchuk has been engaged by UNDP, IOM, and GIZ on projects spanning innovation ecosystems, migration strategy, and post-war recovery. She actively cooperates with Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science and brings a uniquely cross-sectoral perspective to questions of academic resilience, diaspora engagement, and knowledge-driven economic recovery.
 
We look forward to our research benefiting from Dr. Polishchuk’s deep understanding of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and to advancing the inspired mission of the Ukrainian Science Diaspora, whose mission is:
 

“To unite the efforts of Ukrainian scholars from different migration waves for the reconstruction and development of Ukraine, as well as for a more effective integration of Ukrainian scholars into the global research community.”

Yevheniia Polishchuk and Bill Dutton in Oxford 2025
 

Professor Anastasia Simakhova (visitng professor at USC) and Yevheniia

 
William H. Dutton is the Co-President of the Portulans Institute and is the author of The Fifth Estate: The Power Shift of the Digital Age (OUP 2023).
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