Invisible University for Ukraine brings scholars to Budapest and Lviv for summer school on Ukraine's future

The Invisible University for Ukraine will hold its fifth annual Summer School in Budapest and Lviv from July 1-12, gathering 60 students and scholars to examine democracy, reconstruction, memory, and EU integration. The program lands as Ukraine continues the war and looks ahead to rebuilding its institutions, education system, and civic life.

Why it matters: - The Invisible University for Ukraine is using the summer school to train students and scholars who will help shape Ukraine’s democratic future, post-war recovery, and European integration. - The program arrives while Ukraine is still defending itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion, making education, research, and civic leadership part of the reconstruction effort. - The initiative has grown from an emergency response into a transnational academic network focused on Ukraine’s long-term recovery.

What happened: - The Invisible University for Ukraine is holding its fifth annual Summer School, Between Pasts and Futures: Competing Legacies, Narratives and Visions of the Future in Ukraine and Beyond. - The program runs in Budapest and Lviv from July 1-12, 2026. - The summer school is part of the program’s ninth semester overall. - The cohort includes 60 students from the Invisible University for Ukraine program. - Scholars from Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, Sciences Po, Emory University, the University of Alberta, the University of Konstanz, Tallinn University, Lund University, Kyiv School of Economics, Bard College and Central European University are participating.

The details: - Sessions focus on civil society, democracy, genocidal violence, European integration, memory politics, post-war reconstruction and democratic resilience. - The program frames reconstruction as more than rebuilding infrastructure, with emphasis on critical thinking and the next generation of civic leaders. - Media are invited on Tuesday, July 7, for discussions on institutional transformation, student research, wartime resilience and Europe’s future. - That day’s program includes Ukraine’s Path to the European Union: Meeting Rule of Law and Judicial Independence Standards, with Olesia Tragniuk of Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and Nuria Magaldi of the University of Córdoba. - The Student Research Conference will feature original work on memory politics, cultural heritage preservation, wartime civil society, security policy, law, media, identity and democratic resilience. - A Lessons Learned from Tactical Medicine workshop will be led by Maiia Novkovych of the Prytula Foundation. - CEU’s 35th Anniversary Presidential Lecture, Growth Through Fire: Ukraine Is Building the Future Before the War Ends, will be delivered by Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics. - The program turns on Wednesday, July 8, to academic writing, research translation, PhD life in the 2020s and literary work. - Writing Day will include workshops on academic writing, responsible uses of AI in research and publication preparation. - From Research to Policy Analytics: Translating Evidence into Impact will examine how scholarship can shape policymaking and public debate. - How Do We Do a PhD in the 2020s? will cover academic careers, international collaboration, funding and research in a period of global uncertainty. - Marianna Kiyanovs'ka, recipient of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, will lead a literary evening. - Kiyanovs'ka’s work, including The Voices of Babyn Yar, centers on memory, responsibility, war and the legacy of violence.

Between the lines: - The program is built as both an academic event and a form of wartime institution-building. - The mix of research, policy, medicine, literature and law points to a broader effort to prepare participants for public roles beyond academia. - The summer school also functions as a forum for Ukraine’s future relationship with Europe, not just a discussion of the war itself. - Ostap Sereda, academic director of the program, said the initiative has become a unique intellectual community that helps address the immediate effects of war while creating space for difficult debates about Ukraine’s past, present and future. - Balazs Trencsenyi, professor of history at CEU Vienna and director of the CEU Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest, said the program is shaped collaboratively by students, mentors and faculty and focuses on issues important to both Ukraine and Europe.

What's next: - The July 7 and July 8 sessions are the key media-facing days in this year’s program. - Participants will continue building academic networks and research projects intended to support Ukraine’s recovery and state-building. - IUFU and Visible Ukraine are expected to keep connecting Ukrainian scholarship with international public debate.

The bottom line: - The summer school is designed to turn wartime education into a pipeline for Ukraine’s next generation of scholars, policymakers and civic leaders.