Ursula Woolley received her PhD from UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in 2024, for a study of agentic civic discursive responses in Ukraine to Russian history propaganda. In September 2022 she was an EUTIM visiting researcher and, in October-November 2021, a graduate student research fellow at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder)/Słubice. During her PhD research she taught at UCL on: Understanding Politics (I): the Big Questions in Contemporary Europe; Undermining Democracy: Political Manipulation in Comparative Perspective; Post-Soviet Politics and Society; Approaches to Knowledge: Introduction to Interdisciplinarity. She received her MRes from UCL in 2018 and as an undergraduate studied in Cambridge and Moscow.

Between 1990-2004 she worked for the British Council, mainly in and on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  Between 2006-12 she was in local politics in Islington, including as Chair of the Regeneration Committee, Lead Member for Children and Young People, Lead Member for Adult Social Care, and Joint Deputy Leader of the Council. She was Director of Pushkin House in London (2012-2016).  She has been Chair of the Ukrainian Institute London since 2022. 

Research interests

Politics, security, Ukraine, discursive securitisation, epistemic imperialism, democratic backsliding, political agency, prefigurative politics, historical politics.

Office hours

Monday: 13.00 - 14.00 

Monday: 16.00 - 17.00

Bush House NE 7.22

Teaching

• Public Policy in Europe
• Politics of Central and Eastern Europe

Latest publications

"'Holier Than Thou?' Discourses of Orthodox Interdenominational Ecclesiastical Historical Politics in Ukraine at the Time of the Ukrainian Autocephaly Process." Woolley, U. (2025). In Hein-Kirche, H. & L. Berezhnaya (eds), The Sacralization of History in Times of Crises: Modern Eastern Europe. Budapest: CEU Press.

"Writing the History of the Holocaust in Ukraine Before and After 24 February 2022: An Outside Perspective." Woolley, U. (2025). In Holocaust Studies: A Ukrainian Focus.

“Ukraine and Putin’s Post-Soviet Imperialism.” Woolley, U. (2022). In Political Insight.