The Program is the second joint project initiated by the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine.

The program targets to train scientific and educational staff with the highest qualification degree. The course follows the pattern of the third cycle of European Higher Education Area based on so-called Salzburg Principles. The program will train researchers in communications that meet the best world practices. So far, Ukraine doesn’t have any specialists of the kind either in terms of commercially oriented researches or social importance surveys. Ukrainian researchers pay very little attention to long-term influence of various media on various audiences as well as to long-standing preferences and demands of the audiences including influence of the media on the society and separate groups. Neither can Ukraine boast of interdisciplinary researches aimed at the study of communications in the context other sciences.

Research areas under the new PhD program:
• Communication and public sphere
• Anthropological aspects of communication
• Political communications, public opinion and political psychology
• Organizational, strategic and marketing communication
• Media policy and governmental communication
• Intercultural and interpersonal communication
• Gender aspects in communication
• Visual communication and movies research
• Communication and health

Yevgeniy Fedchenko, Director of Kiev Mohyla School of Journalism, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy
“The fixed subject of research is the key difference between the Program and the existing postgraduate courses. The second difference is that the Program is designed for full-time studies, while an intensive course of education and research disciplines will be partially lectured by guest specialists from Western universities. The third point concerns individual research project, which will be carried out under supervision of several scientific advisers including one adviser from a partner-university in the West. The fourth key advantage of the Program is that it will become the first step to help integrate Ukrainian media researches into the global context. All PhD candidates will carry out researches of the Ukrainian field in English, submit results to international specialized journals and to national specialized print media, and present the research results at international and national conferences, forums and seminars. The above mentioned activities are aimed to reduce the so-called impact factor of the research results. Achievements of Ukrainian media researchers in the global science are very poor. This makes their scientific value and relevance rather doubtful”.
Svetlana Panyushkina – Project manager, Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine:
“Contemporary education is one of the areas of Foundation’s activity. Together with our partners from the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy we will launch the first PhD program in mass communications.  The Program is of high importance, because the graduates will be trained according to the third cycle of European Higher Education Area. To obtain the knowledge matching the European standards, the students will have to be mobile, use latest scientific publications, publish research results both in Ukraine and abroad, participate in international conferences, and share experience with foreign universities. Our grant will open the access to all possible advantages of foreign education and will help Ukraine educate high-rank specialists with a diploma matching the global demands. The project is designed for four years. Donations for the first year come up to UAH 560,000. The amount will be allocated for the oncoming years will be fixed annually”.

For additional information please contact:

Svetlana Panyushkina – Program manager, Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine, tel. (044) 502-52-16, (050) 348-47-43, or click www.fdu.org.ua

Kyiv Mohyla Academy National University
Yevgeniy Fedchenko, Director of Kiev Mohyla School of Journalism, 463-77-02, http://j-school.kiev.ua/phd-program/