Ukraine Conflict Panel - UC UK Chats

This event provides an opportunity for the UC Alumni UK community to learn and discuss the current status of the conflict in Ukraine and what we might expect in the future for Ukraine, Russia and the world. Our UC UK Chat panel will offer expert insights and consider how we might take action, collectively and individually, in support of those impacted by the Ukrainian crisis.

All donations raised through registration for this event will benefit UC campus funds providing assistance to refugees and supporting research on immigration issues detailed here.

We are delighted to be joined by:

• Benjamin J. Cohen, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, UC Santa Barbara - Professor Benjamin J. Cohen, a specialist in international political economy, joined the UC Santa Barbara Department of Political Science in 1991. His publications have addressed issues of international monetary relations, U.S. foreign economic policy, currency integration, sovereign debt, theories of economic imperialism, and the history of the discipline of international political economy. He is the author of sixteen books. His newest book, "Currency Statecraft: Monetary Rivalry and Geopolitical Ambition," was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2019.

• Georg Michels, Professor of History, UC Riverside - Michels received his Ph.D. in early modern Russian and East Slavic history from Harvard University after training as a Slavic linguist at UCLA and Göttingen University in his native Germany. His monograph "At War With the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia" (Stanford, 1999) explores the multifaceted forms of resistance (religious, elite, popular) triggered by imposed reforms in the Orthodox church liturgy. His many other publications investigate the history of Old Belief (Russia’s principal movement of religious dissent); religious persecution and intolerance; the Russian patriarchate (1589-1700); and Russian-Ukrainian relations. Michels is also co-editor of "Russia’s Dissident Old Believers, 1650-1950" (Minneapolis, 2009).

• Sonia Slavinski, ESG Reporting & Assurance Manager - KPMG, UC Riverside alumna - Sonia, co-chair of the UC UK Running Club, has recently returned from a trip to assist refugees at the Polish-Ukrainian border.

• Moderated by: Ryan Chilcote, Journalist, Broadcaster, Moderator, Consultant, and PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent, UCSC alumnus - Ryan has been a keen observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union ever since he landed in a Soviet high school on an exchange program. Ryan speaks fluent Russian and has reported from the region for more than twenty years - most recently for Bloomberg Television. He has conducted exclusive interviews with a number of (current and former) world leaders, including the leaders of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Finland and Austria.