Masterclasses

Vasyl Myroshnychenko resumed the functions of the Ambassador of Ukraine to Australia on April 1, 2022.

On March 7th, 2022 Minister of Defence of Ukraine appointed him as his advisor.

In May of 2021, he was appointed as a member of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian Institute, a cultural diplomacy outfit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he was an active business and civil society leader in Ukraine.

From 2006 to 2022, he was a Partner at CFC Big Ideas, a Kyiv-based strategic communications company. He has 20 years of experience advising clients on corporate communications, public affairs and reputation management. Vasyl advised many multinational companies and domestic industry leaders across various sectors.

Vasyl is a co-founder of Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a media NGO set up in early March of 2014 aimed at amplifying Ukraine’s voice internationally. He was in charge of numerous projects and campaigns during 2014-2019.

In 2015-2016, he was a Head of Board of Professional Government Association, an NGO which has united Ukrainian alumni of the Western Universities with a goal of mobilizing talent for the economic, legal and judicial reforms in Ukraine.

He sat on the board of the Ukrainian-British City Club, a London-based organisation promoting UK-Ukraine trade and investment relations between 2007-2022.

In 2018, Vasyl was a Marshall Memorial Fellow, a prestigious leadership program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

In 2002-2004, Vasyl was a President of the European Youth Parliament-Ukraine, an international youth NGO.

He was a Chevening Scholar and earned MSc in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2006, UK). He also holds MA and BA degrees in international relations from Institute of International Relations, Kyiv National Shevchenko University (2002, 2003). Vasyl is a graduate of the Global Village for Future Leaders of Business and Industry program at Iacocca Institute, Lehigh University (2002, USA) and Swedish Institute Management Program (Sweden, 2009) and a two-week intensive course on public affairs and advocacy from the Center of Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington, DC (USA, 2014).

Vasyl has two children and is married to Liana Myroshnychenko.

The Honourable Dr Penelope Wensley AC was born in Toowoomba and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honours at the University of Queensland in 1967. In 1968, Ms Wensley joined the Australian Foreign service and pursued a highly distinguished career as a diplomat, representing Australia in a wide range of overseas posts and senior policy positions until 2008, when she became Queensland’s twenty-fifth Governor.

Among her prestigious diplomatic appointments, she served as Australia’s Ambassador to the United Nations for seven years, in both Geneva and New York, as Ambassador for the Environment, High Commissioner to India and Ambassador to France. She has been awarded honorary Doctorates by The University of Queensland, Griffith University, JCU (James Cook University), and the Queensland University of Technology.

In 1994, The University of Queensland named her as the first woman Alumnus of the Year. In 2001, Penelope was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), for her distinguished contributions to Australia’s international relations. On Australia Day 2011 she was appointed a Companion (AC) in the General Division of the Order of Australia: “For eminent contribution to the people of Queensland, and to Australia’s international relations through senior diplomatic representational roles and as a key contributor to initiatives of the United Nations.”

Penelope is a Fellow of The Women’s College and of Kings College within the University of Queensland, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (FAIIA) and an Honorary Fellow of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand (HFEIANZ). In addition to her role as Patron of Alumni Friends, she is the National Patron of Soil Science Australia. She is Chairman of the Australian Institute of Marine Science Council and of the Reef Advisory Committee, established by the Australian and Queensland Governments to advise on the implementation of Reef 2050-the Long term Sustainability  Plan for the Great Barrier Reef.

Dr Jemma King is a behavioural scientist specialising in the psychophysiology of stress, emotional intelligence and performance under pressure. She is the founder and director of BioPsychAnalytics, a Fellow at the University of Queensland School of Psychology, and a Specialist External Advisor to the Australian Government, Defence and McKinsey & Company. Jemma teaches at the Australian War College and helped design a behavioural analysis for Australian Intelligence Agencies. Her applied research and training spans Special Operations Command, intelligence agencies, Queensland Police SERT, Australian Olympic Swim Team, AIS and the British Royal Marines.  She has worked with diplomats and foreign affairs professionals to help them sustain clarity, judgement and wellbeing in high-stakes international roles. Jemma has published her work in Nature Scientific Reports and is the author of Sleep First (Wiley).

Bryce Wakefield is the CEO of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand. He trained as a political scientist with particular expertise in International Relations and the international affairs of East Asia.

From 2008 to 2012 Bryce was the associate responsible for Northeast Asian programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In this role, he was responsible for conceiving, designing and organising around 60 events in Washington, including policy briefings in the U.S. Congress, on political issues in Australia, Taiwan, North and South Korea and Japan. He co-organised, with the Wilson Center’s partners, three major annual policy conferences in Tokyo. He has also given talks in Japanese, including for parliamentarians at the National Diet.

He was also a university lecturer with tenure in area studies and international relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands. While at Leiden from 2012-2018 he taught numerous classes on the foreign policy and domestic politics of Japan, the politics of East Asia, comparative politics, and the relationship between politics and culture. He designed and implemented a successful specialization on culture and politics for Leiden’s graduate program in International Relations. During his time as a university academic he also delivered training, induction and briefing sessions for Dutch and international diplomats in the Hague and in Japan.

Bryce is regularly quoted in the media. His work and views on political issues in Asia and Australasia have appeared in such outlets as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, BusinessWeek, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, SCMP, the Telegraph, de Volkskrant the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times, as well as on the ABC, ACN, SBS, BBC News, CNBC, CSPAN, 7News Australia, and Sky News Australia, TVNZ, and in such Japanese outlets as the Daily Yomiuri, NHK and the Sankei Shimbun. In February 2015, the Tokyo bureau chief of the New York Times named him as one of 10 “influential and reliable intellectuals” outside Washington who could help policymakers better know Japan. His can also write in German, and his recent op-eds have featured in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung and the Neuer Zuercher Zeitung.

Bryce’s academic publications to date focus on constitutional issues and defence policy, political marketing and national identity in Japan. While at the Wilson Center, he also edited and contributed to several of the centre’s multi-author publications on East Asian politics and foreign policy. He has also written on New Zealand’s foreign policy and has been called to the Australian Senate Foreign Affairs and Defence References Select Committee to give expert testimony.

Bryce lived in Japan from 1998 to 2004 and earned his master’s degree from Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy. He earned his PhD in political studies from the University of Auckland.