Alumni of the Month: Anton Kotenko and Virpi Mäkinen

I am a historian and currently work as a researcher at the Department of Eastern European History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. I study the history of the Romanov Empire in the long nineteenth century, and my main focus is on the empire’s southwestern provinces, corresponding to the territory of contemporary Ukraine.

My stay at the Collegium was focused on writing a book on the history of the concept of modern Ukraine. The idea was to trace the construction of its spatial, temporal, and political dimensions in the 1840s–1917. I argue that the concept of modern Ukraine had a future-oriented temporality and envisaged Ukraine as a land of emancipated people, free of political despotism, social inequality, economic exploitation, and national oppression. I am delighted to say that the book,  (Oxford University Press), comes out this month, in May 2026. It will be available in Open Access thanks to the generous support of Helsinki University Library.

I deeply appreciate my time at the Collegium not only for having “a room of my own” to write, which was located just across the street from the best place to study the Romanov Empire outside the Russian Federation – the National Library of Finland and its Slavonic Library. With an atmosphere resembling the ancient akademia that I only read about in the legends of ancient Greece, it provided me with the opportunity to talk, walk, sing, watch movies, play ping-pong, and share coffee and with remarkable colleagues, most of whom were not historians. I was able to bounce ideas around with them and learn a multitude of things that were totally new to me, and I am sure that some of those conversations will sprout in my forthcoming research. 

I was a fellow at the Collegium from October 2022 to December 2023, when politicians around the world became increasingly obsessed with nationalism. I am hugely grateful for the chance to spend this time around scholars not just from Finland but from all over the world, at the institute that believes in our shared humanity regardless of our passports

I am Senior Lecturer of Theological and Social Ethics in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. I continue to investigate medieval and early modern moral, political, and legal thought, particularly within the Franciscan tradition and the School of Salamanca.

I have been fortunate to work at HCAS for a total of ten years, having started when the institute was established. My first two separate periods as a Core Fellow (2001–2005 and 2005–2007), offered me, at the time a young postdoctoral researcher, an inspiring setting for becoming acquainted with interdisciplinary research. During the third period (2007–2012), when I was an Academy Research Fellow funded by the Research Council of Finland, I also served a half-year period as the Deputy Director of HCAS. Thus, I was able to follow the institution’s development throughout its first decade, and I am glad to see that it continues to thrive into its second quarter-century.

What I appreciate the most was that the Collegium created a community that enabled getting to know a wide range of researchers through weekly brown bag seminars, informal chats in the Common Room, and of course, the famous seasonal parties.

I see my periods at the Collegium as the most formative times for my career. I am still collaborating closely with several researchers whom I met at the Collegium. Even my current research draws from the intellectual foundations and cooperation already laid at HCAS: I am leading a project “Ethics of History and Law of Responding to Extreme Suffering” as part of a Centre of Excellence consortium in Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering, funded by the Research Council of Finland and directed by Professor Sami Pihlström, who is a former director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.