Dr. Olha Chernovol, a postdoctoral fellow who came to uOttawa in the summer of 2022 after her life and career in Ukraine were upended by the Russian invasion, is set to explore corruption in Ukraine’s new reality thanks to funding received from the Scholars at Risk Network.
Dr. Chernovol’s current research explores anti-corruption mechanisms in Ukraine. The country’s current anti-corruption regime, originally put in place in 2014, has faced increased risks since the start of the Russian invasion. Many observers wonder about the capacity of Ukrainian enforcement authorities to sustain their oversight activities in the face of new and increased risks of corruption and money-laundering that may result from martial law being imposed. Dr. Chernovol will examine these recent developments, as well as the corruption risks that arose prior to the war, during the implementation of the current anti-corruption system. She hopes that documenting the Ukrainian experience could provide helpful insights for Canadian policy makers as they evaluate how best to improve Canada’s current anti-corruption system.
Dr. Chernovol is an expert on the history of law, with recent research focusing on the legal duties of citizens and anti-corruption policy. She originally journeyed from Kyiv to Ottawa in 2022 to work with Professor Jennifer Quaid as a postdoctoral fellow through funding from a special response fund for researchers from Ukraine created by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Now, with support from uOttawa’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC), Dr. Chernovol has earned funding from the Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network through a special fellowship support program that helps North American member institutions host threatened and displaced scholars from Ukraine.
The SAR-Ukraine Fellowship, combined with institutional support from the SAR program at uOttawa – which is based at the HRREC – provides Dr. Chernovol with funding to continue her research at uOttawa for the next two years. She will be based at the HRREC during that time, where she will benefit from the Centre’s vast network of educators, researchers and students who hail from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. And as a member of Dr. Quaid’s research team, Dr, Chernovol brings her expertise on the legal and institutional components of anti-corruption policy to Dr. Quaid’s substantial work on organizational criminal liability and corporate accountability.
The Faculty of Law is pleased to have Dr. Chernovol as a part of the uOttawa law community for a further two years, and looks forward to seeing how her important research develops!