Hanna Shelest, PhD, Director of Security Programmes at the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism” and Editor-in-chief at UA: Ukraine Analytica. Dr Shelest also is a non-resident senior fellow at CEPA (Washington, DC). Before this, she had served for more than ten years as a Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine, Odesa Branch. In 2014, Dr Shelest was a Visiting Research Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Previously she had experience in PR and lobbying for government and business, as well as teaching at universities. Since 2006, Dr Shelest has been a guest lecturer for the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Swedish Defence University, Ukrainian Catholic University, National Defence College of the UAE, NATO Defence College (Rome), World Economic Forum, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, etc.
Dr Shelest received her MA in International Relations with Deep Knowledge of English and Arabic Languages at Odesa National University, and a PhD in International Relations from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as well as a professional Certificate in Peace and Conflict Resolution from Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand).
Dr Shelest was an adviser of the Working Group preparing Ukrainian Navy Strategy 2035 and was involved in working groups developing the Foreign Policy Strategy of Ukraine, Asian Strategy for MFA, and Ukraine’s NATO Public Communication Strategy. She led different policy-related projects, among others: Scorecards of the Ukrainian Foreign Policy (2015-2022); Ukraine-NATO: Enhanced Level (2021-2022); The Hybrid War Decade: Lessons Learned to Move Forward Successfully (2019), Ukraine’s Elections in Focus (2019); Foreign Policy Recommendations for the Parliament of Ukraine (2017-2021).
She is a regular presenter at international conferences and commenter for the media.
Dr Shelest is a Rotary Peace Fellow 2010, Black Sea Young Reformer 2011, John Smith Fellow 2012, NDC PfP Research Fellow 2014, Marshall Memorial Fellow 2016, TUBITAK Research fellow 2018, Think Visegrad Fellow 2019.