VATMH Distinguished Visitor
Darya Tsymbalyuk
Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research. She is the author of the book Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity, 2025), in which she offers an intimate portrait of her beloved homeland against the backdrop of Russia’s war and ecocide. In addition to writing, Tsymbalyuk works with images through drawing, painting, collage, and film essays. Her visual work was featured at the 5th Odes(s)a Biennale of Contemporary Art, Kyiv Biennial 2023, The Württembergische Kunstverein Stuttgart, and Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture, among other places.
Tsymbalyuk currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago.
You can learn more about her work here: https://daryatsymbalyuk.com/
Awards
2023 Mary Zirin Prize, Association for Women in Slavic Studies
Selected Publications
(book) Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity, 2025)
(book) Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics, and Donbas, written and edited with Victoria Donovan (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Ukraine, 2022)
Constellations of Ukrainian Thought and the Environmental Humanities, with Tanya Richardson, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, forthcoming 2025
The Unlikely Species Entangled in Ukraine's Resistance to Russia, BBC Future Planet, February 2024
I Dream of Seeing the Steppe Again: Plant Stories in the Context of Russia’s War on Ukraine, Narrative Culture Journal, summer 2023
Radiant Absences, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, issue 61: Earthly Mattering, summer 2023
Ukraine and the Traps of Proximity to European and Russian Slavic Whiteness, Funambulist: Politics of Space and Bodies, June 2023
Academia Must Recentre Embodied and Uncomfortable Knowledge, Nature Human Behaviour, 2022
A Landmine Detonates in the Woods, IWM post, 2022
Kyiv to LA:
Darya Tsymbalyuk's residency is part of a unique collaboration with Kyiv to LA, a cross-cultural initiative that invites Ukrainian artists, researchers, and art historians to participate in a residency and public program in Los Angeles. Organized by Independent Curator Asha Bukojemsky, the project marks a unique collaboration with several Los Angeles organization, including the Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House; 18th Street Arts Center; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (ICA LA); GRI Scholars Program; California Institute of Technology (Caltech); The Center for European and Russian Studies, UCLA; Los Angeles Filmforum; and e-flux in New York, amongst others.
Kyiv to LA is made possible by a generous grant from Nora Mcneely Hurley and Manitou Fund.
