Free Global Online Course on the Holodomor Now Available on Coursera

The Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), University of Alberta, has launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Famine as Genocide: The Holodomor in Ukraine, worldwide on Coursera. 

The 13-module course offers scholars, students, and the public a vital resource to examine one of the twentieth century’s most devastating yet understudied episodes of mass violence. Its launch ahead of April’s Genocide Awareness, Remembrance, and Prevention Month places the initiative within a broader international conversation on genocide recognition, historical accountability, and prevention. The course is freely accessible worldwide, and University of Alberta students may enroll for academic credit. 

"This course couldn't have been produced even ten years ago. With this course, HREC has marshalled new research and an international network of scholars to explore the Holodomor and its many facets in an engrossing online format." — Frank Sysyn, Professor, University of Alberta and Director, Peter Jacyk Centre, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. 

The course, delivered through Coursera, draws on genocide studies, Soviet history, colonial theory, and memory studies, situating the Holodomor within frameworks of empire, state power, and information control. It integrates new research, archival documents, survivor testimony, and photographs to explore lived experiences, the destruction of Ukraine’s cultural renaissance, international responses, and long-term global consequences of the famine while addressing contemporary concerns of disinformation and denial and demonstrating why genocide education remains essential today. 

“The course is accessible, smart, compact, lively, and well presented, and distills a lot of complicated scholarship into 13 smooth-flowing lessons. It’s the best I’ve seen of this genre.” — Norman Naimark, Professor, Eastern European Studies at the Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

The launch marks a milestone in this, the 50th anniversary year of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, founded at the University of Alberta in 1976. The MOOC reflects CIUS’s commitment to bringing scholarly expertise to global digital audiences. 

The course was made possible through the generous support of the Helen and Paul Baszucki Family and the Temerty Foundation. 

For media inquiries, interview requests, or access to course materials, please contact: Tetiana Mala, Research Communications Lead | Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta at tmala@ualberta.ca