Moderator:

Olena PALKO, historian of the post-Soviet minorities, University of Basel, member of the OHTE Scientific Council, Switzerland 

Olena Palko, Assistant Professor at the Chair for East-European History at the University of Basel, Switzerland, is a historian of Ukraine and modern Eastern Europe. Educated at Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, Ukraine, she holds a PhD in History from the University of East Anglia (UK). She has previously worked at Birkbeck College, University of London, and has held Research Fellowships at the Vienna Institute for Human Sciences, Humboldt University (Berlin), the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, and the Polish Institute for Advanced Studies. Olena Palko is a member of the Advisory Board of the Ukrainian Research in Switzerland (URIS). She is the author of Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), and a co-editor of Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing Borders in Twentieth Century (Montreal, 2022), and Ukraine’s Many Faces. Land, People, and Culture Revisited (Bielefeld, 2023). She is a co-convener of the Study Group for Minority History.

Panel:

Yasamin ALKHANSA, Researcher in Education, University of Saint-Andrews, UK

Yasamin Alkhansa holds a PhD in International Education from the University of Sussex. She is interested in history education, focusing on how it contributes to the (re)production, accommodation and disruption of ideology and hegemonic narratives of the past. She has worked in different European and British institutes of higher education and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of St. Andrews, School of History, Department of Iranian Studies, where she is writing a book on the Politics of Teaching the Past in Iran, funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISFR).

Ismael CORTES GOMEZ, Associate Professor at the UNESCO Institute of Philosophy for Peace, Roma activist, Spain

Ismael Cortés has a background in academic research and practical experience in his home country and international institutions. Currently holding the UNESCO chair of Philosophy for Peace, he earned his MA in Philosophy from the University of Granada and his MA and PhD in International Studies of Peace, Conflicts, and Development, graduating Summa Cum Laude. His research focuses on the interplay between ethics and politics to promote peaceful activism and social transformation. Ismael has held research positions at the University of Nottingham, the Human Rights Institute at Carlos III University of Madrid, the University of Granada, and the Central European University in Budapest. He has worked as a Policy Analyst for think tanks in Brussels, such as the Open Society European Policy Institute. He served as a Member of Parliament in Spain (2019-2023) and as a Senior Policy Analyst in the European Parliament (2023-2024). He is currently an Associate Professor in the Master's program in International Peace, Conflicts, and Development Studies at Universitat Jaume I.

Claire HOLLISS, Historian, specialist in the history of women and LGBTQ+ minorities, head of history at Reigate Sixth Form College

Claire Holliss is the Head of History at Reigate College, a role she is combining with part-time study for a PhD in education at UCL. Her research concerns the inclusion of LGBTQ+ history in the curriculum. She has written about representation in the history curriculum for the journal Teaching History, the History Workshop Journal Online and was part of the writing team for a textbook on social history in 20th century Britain published by Hodder Education. She has also delivered teacher-training sessions for Hodder and for PGCE students at the universities of Reading, Worcester and Manchester. 

Discussant:

Youth Delegation