Congratulations to HRSMA Alum on receiving the 2024 Outstanding Recent Alumni Award

Tanya is an alum of the Human Rights Studies M.A. (HRSMA) Program and a recipient of Columbia University’s Scholarship for Displaced Students. When she first came to Columbia University in the fall of 2022, Tanya launched a mentorship program for Ukrainian youth called MentorUkraine. The mentorship program was successful and she later co-founded Brave Generation to expand the support provided to displaced Ukrainians to extend beyond education. Additionally, Tanya received the Davis Fellowship Award in 2023. She is currently pursuing an MA in Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at Yale University. 

Tanya was born and raised in Horlivka in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. In 2014, she left her hometown, which was occupied by Russian forces during the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine. She fled Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. In the HRSMA program, Tanya focused on issues of social inequality, human rights in the context of war, and Russian Foreign Policy in the post-Soviet space. Her research examined the obligation of the occupying power to ensure the right to water in the occupied territory, and Russian education policies in the occupied territories of Ukraine.