Olga Onuch

RESEARCH IN THE NEWS

• WaPo Monkey Cage research blog about protests and migration in Venezuela (and Ukraine).
• WaPo Monkey Cage research blog about protests in Venezuela (and Russia and Ukraine).
• Discussing Venezuela Protests on Hromadske.TV
• PoliSci Profs. (including yours truly) give advice to Daenerys Targaryen in a WaPo Monkey Cage Blog
• Jessica Elgot of The Guardian discusses my research on protests in Ukraine.
• Thoughts on EuroMaidan one year on at WaPo MC & HERE & HERE
• For more media & public engagement HERE

 

 

DR. OLGA ONUCH is an Assistant Professor in Politics at the University of Manchester, she is also an Associate Fellow at Nuffield College (Oxford) and 2017 Research Fellow at the Davis Center (Harvard). She received her DPhil in Comparative Politics from the University of Oxford in 2010. Dr. Onuch has previously held the prestigious Petro Jacyk Prize Fellowship at CERES (University of Toronto); the Newton Prize Fellowship in Comparative Politics (awarded by the Royal Society & British Academy) at SIAS and the Latin American Centre; a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at Nuffield College (Oxford); a Shklar Research Fellowship at HURI (Harvard). In 2014 she was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship Grant (UCL – not taken up). She is the winner of the 2017 PSA National Sir Bernard Crick Award for Outstanding Teaching

 

RESEARCH

Her research is focused on the comparative study of protest politics, political behaviour and institutions, in democratizing states in Latin American (Argentina) and Eastern Europe (Ukraine). Her 2014 book MAPPING MASS MOBILIZATIONS has received critical praise placing her on the map as one of the foremost experts on protests and activism in Ukraine.

PROTEST AND ACTIVISM IN UKRAINE

Dr. Onuch is an internationally leading expert in activism and protest in Ukraine. To better understand the motivations and mechanisms of mass mobilization Onuch has carried out extensive fieldwork related to the Orange Revolution and EuroMaidan protest waves (in comparative perspective with Argentine protest waves). In 2014, Onuch has conducted on-site surveys, interviews and focus groups of protest participants in Kyiv, Ukraine as part of her Ukrainian Protest Project. This research examined the role of social media as a motivating or mobilizing factor in the EuroMaidan and she has developed a theory of the “protestorate” in post-communist contexts. Beyond focusing on contemporary activism and protest in Ukraine, Onuch has also researched the historical connectivity between waves of mass mobilization (since 1920, including The Revolution on The Granite and Ukraine without Kuchma). Tracing the historical role of ideas, actors and institutions, her research has identified continuity and connectivity between different protest waves over time. Findings from her research on Ukrainian activism and protest have been published as a monograph, book chapters and several peer-reviewed journal articles. Onuch is currently working on a book monograph focusing on the EuroMaidan Mass-Mobilization.  

SURVEY RESEARCH: ELECTIONS, PROTEST, IDENTITY, CONFLICT

Between May 2014 and January 2015 Dr. Onuch (Co-PI), and her colleagues Prof. Henry Hale (P-I, George Washington University), Prof. Timothy Colton (Co-PI, Harvard University) and Dr. Nadiya Kravets (Co-PI, Harvard University), lead a research team studying the politics of the Ukrainian crisis, having been awarded a large National Science Foundation RAPID Grant to conduct the ‘Ukraine Crisis Election Panel Survey’ a three-wave nationally representative panel survey of the Ukrainian population. The first findings from this project (on the role of media and blame attribution and ethnolinguistic identity) have been published in Post Soviet Affairs and GeoPolitics. Further research is under review in leading political science journals.

PROTESTS AND ELECTIONS IN ARGENTINA 

In late 2013, Dr. Onuch completed new field-based data collection in Buenos Aires, Argentina investigating: How political parties motivate and mobilize citizens to vote? Data and findings stemming from this project have been published in book chapters and are forthcoming in peer-reviewed journal articles. This research builds on previous data collection projects focusing on the 2001 Crisis Mass Mobilization (Argentinazo), currently published as a book manuscript.

‘EXIT’ AND ‘VOICE’ in ROMANIA AND UKRAINE

In January 2014, Dr. Onuch (Co-I), and her colleague Dr. Sorana Toma received a OUP John Fell Fund Starter Grant (for proof-of concept and pump-priming) to study the nexus between ‘exit’ (migration) and ‘voice’ (protest) (see: Hirschman 1978) focusing on the cases of Romania (2013) and Ukraine (EuroMaidan 2013/2104). They have conducted exploratory survey and field work in 2014 on the topic. They hosted a series of comparative workshops on the topic in June 2015, June 2016 and June 2017 at the University of Oxford, ENSAE, and The University of Manchester. They expect to publish a special issue of the collection of articles presented at the workshops, in 2018.

 

MEDIA AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE KEYWORDS:  

Activism*, Civil Associations, Civil Society, Civil Society Aid/Promotion, Democracy Aid/Promotion, ‘Revolutions’, Comparative Politics*, Democratization*, Elections*, Electoral Fraud, Electoral Populism*, Mass-Mobilization*, Party Machines, Politics of Economic Crisis, Political Participation, Political Parties, Protest*, Social Movements*, Transition*, Youth Movements*.

Sectors and industries to which research relates: Consultancy, NGOs, Government.

Countries and regions to which research relates (media interviews): Ukraine*, Argentina*, Mexico, Poland*, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America.

 

LANGUAGES:

• Ukrainian [Spoken:Fluent/Native, Written: Fluent/Native];
• Polish [Spoken:Fluent/Native, Written: Advanced];
• English [Spoken:Fluent/Native, Written: Fluent/Native];
• French [Spoken: Advanced, Written: Advanced, ‘French Immersion’ primary & secondary education];
• Spanish [Spoken: Intermediate, Written: Intermediate];
• Russian [Spoken: Basic /Working Knowledge, Written: Working Knowledge/Intermediate].

MEDIA  EXPERIENCE: 

Press, Radio & TV in Argentina; Brazil; Canada; France; Poland; Ukraine; United Kingdom; and USA.

CONTACT DETAILS

School of Social Sciences

University of Manchester

M13 9PL

 

Email 1: olga.onuch [at] manchester.ac.uk

Email 2: onuch [at] g.harvard.edu