As a means to overcome the conceptual isolation that area or ethnic studies sometimes have to contend with, this special issue of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (EWJUS) aims to look at some exceptional yet not unique issues in both Irish and Ukrainian socio-political history. This issue is a logical follow-up to another special issue of Схід–Захід [East–West, predecessor of EWJUS], volume 4, Rossia et Britannia: Empires and Nations on the Outskirts of Europe (2001). With a focus on Ukraine and Scotland, it examines the relationship between national identities and institutions in the eastern and western peripheries of Europe, reminding the reader that the modern state can both sustain and erode the very distinctiveness of peripheries while dealing with historical legacies and the unprecedented challenges of globalization.

With several personal projects in the pipeline, I have decided that this would be a good time to pass the baton of Editor-in-Chief to Dr. Svitlana Krys, Kule Chair in Ukrainian Studies & Assistant Professor at MacEwan University.

Special issue of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (EWJUS)

Guest Editors: Dr. Volodymyr Kulyk (Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and Dr. Alla Nedashkivska (University of Alberta, Canada)