Nataliya Borys is a PhD Researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She will work on the topic of  “the contacts and the network of Polish and Soviet historians in Lviv (1950s-1970s)". Her research is part of her PhD project “Deadlock triangle: Moscow-Kyiv-Warsaw: academic collaboration (1950s-1960s) in history: contacts and scholar networks”. In her research project, she aims to see how Polish and Ukrainian historians from Lviv collaborated and contacted. Who from Lviv could go to Poland on a research trip? How could Ukrainian historians in Kyiv and in Lviv work on Polish topics? What privileges or disadvantages did they have in working on the history of Poland? Could they freely access the archives?

While residing in Lviv, she will gather archival materials and will conduct interviews on the contacts of Lviv historians with their Polish and in general foreign colleagues during the Soviet period (starting from the 1950s). Nataliya is particularly interested in knowing who was in touch with Polish colleagues, to investigate more about Volodymyr Borys (1914-1985), one of the rare historians to be praised by Poles during his lifetime. Why was Borys and not another historian worth being mentioned in Polish reviews and memoirs? Moreover, she will work in the archive of Lviv University and the Lviv Ukrainoznavstva im. I. Krypiakevycha, because Lviv University stands apart as a traditionally strong center of Polish. The University tried to keep its tradition of tight relations with Polish historians in Soviet times.