Elana Jakel is Program Manager of the Initiative for the Study of Ukrainian Jewry at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). She received her doctorate in Russian and Soviet History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a dissertation entitled “‘Ukraine without Jews’? Nationality and Belonging in Soviet Ukraine, 1943-1948.” The Program in Jewish Culture and Society was her second home during graduate school. She has received a U.S. Student Fulbright Grant, the International Research and Exchanges Board’s (IREX) Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Program, and the Mandel Center’s Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship. Her research interests include Russian and Soviet history, European Jewish History, the Holocaust, and comparative genocide studies. She has presented widely at academic conferences and workshops, and is working on two edited publication projects as part of her job at the USHMM.