CEFRES Team

Valeriia Hutsaliuk – Research & CV

Expanding the Understanding of Normative Power and Unpacking Competing Visions of the European Union’s Role in a Changing International Order

Valeriia Hutsaliuk is a political scientist and senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Lviv Polytechnic National University. Her research interests include the EU’s foreign policy, EU–Ukraine relations, Normative Power Europe, Power in International Relations, Integral Consciousness Theory, and the Fourth Generation of Human Rights. In 2025, she defended her PhD thesis on the prerequisites and specific features of the use of normative power in EU climate policy towards Ukraine. She has subsequently expanded her research through an International Visegrad Fund Research Grant, which enabled her to conduct archival research at the Historical Archives of the European Union, administered by the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.

At CEFRES, she will work on a project that investigates the relationship between the concepts of normative power and foreign policy leadership and examines whether they should be understood as complementary or contradictory forms of international influence. The EU provides a particularly relevant context for such an inquiry, as it has consistently sought to establish itself both as a normative foreign policy actor and as a leader across multiple policy areas. Building upon this theoretical investigation, her project further explores how competing visions of the EU’s international role are being reconstructed in a period of profound transformation of the international order. Rather than treating Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as an isolated turning point, the project approaches it as a catalyst that has accelerated broader geopolitical, normative, and institutional shifts already reshaping the foundations of international politics and generating new debates about the EU’s place in an evolving international order.

CV

Education

  • 2021–2025 PhD International relations, public communications and regional studies, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University

Thesis: Features of the use of normative power in the EU climate policy (on the case of Ukraine)

  • 2018–2020 MSc International Relations, Public Communications and Regional Studies, Department of International Information, Institute of Applied Mathematics and Fundamental Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University, cum laude

Thesis: The right to make decisions concerning one’s own body: problems of justification and balancing with competing interests

  • 2014–2018 BSc International Relations, Public Communications and Regional Studies, Department of International Information, Institute of Applied Mathematics and Fundamental Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University

Thesis: Threats to human rights with regard to the collection and processing of genetic data

Academic Positions

  • 2026–present Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Lviv Polytechnic National University
  • 2026–present UMIFRE Research Fellow, Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales, Prague
  • 2022–2025 Assistant Lecturer, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Lviv Polytechnic National University

Research Visits and Exchanges

  • 2026 Historical Archives of the European Union, European University Institute, Italy (International Visegrad Fund Research Grant)
  • 2026 Lund University, Sweden (House of Europe International Mobility Grant)
  • 2025 University of Silesia, Poland (NAWA Mobility Grant)
  • 2024 Warsaw University of Technology, Poland (NAWA Mobility Grant for a Research Visit)

Publications

Peer reviewed articles

  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2024). The European Union’s climate policy towards Ukraine: normative power Europe in action? Acta de Historia & Politica: Saeculum XXI, 8, 73–87.
  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2023). Features of the European Union’s Foreign Policy Leadership on Preventing Climate Change. Modern Historical and Political Issues, 48, 85–97.
  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2023). Features of the transformation of the EU’s foreign policy behavior paradigm after a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Acta de Historia & Politica: Saeculum XXI, Special Issue, 24–34.
  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2022). Sanctions as an EU normative foreign policy instrument and their imposition on Russia over Ukraine. Modern Historical and Political Issues, 46, 9–21.
  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2022). Peculiarities of the EU’s normative power use for the establishment of climate-related values in Ukraine. Copernicus Political and Legal Studies, 1(1), 38–47.
  • Sukhorolskyi, P., & Hutsaliuk, V. (2020). Processing of large amounts of personal genetic data: international regulatory issues and human rights challenges. Ukrainian Journal of International Law, 1, 40–49.
  • Sukhorolskyi, P., & Hutsaliuk, V. (2020). Processing of genetic data under GDPR: Unresolved conflict of interests. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, 14(2), 151–176.

Book chapters

  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2023). The normative framework of EU non-normative foreign policy: peculiarities of the EU’s basic values protection in Ukraine in the context of a full-scale Russian invasion. In Y. Turchyn & T. Astramovich-Leik (Eds.), Nowy ład w Europie i Unii Europejskiej: przesłanki – kierunki – priorytety, 49–57.
  • Hutsaliuk, V. (2022). Rethinking the European Green Deal in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In Y. Turchyn & T. Astramovich-Leik (Eds.), The formation and peculiarities of the implementation of the European Union’s Eastern policy, 99–109.