ASU Humanities Institute announces 2026 book award winner
Darya Tsymbalyuk’s award-winning book explores the environmental impact of war
Archival imagery and the cover of "Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War" reflect the book’s exploration of environmental destruction, memory and landscape amid conflict.
Arizona State University’s Humanities Institute is thrilled to announce Darya Tsymbalyuk’s “Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War” as the winner of the institute's 2026 book award.
Established in 2008, the annual award is presented for a nonfiction work of humanities-based scholarship that fosters new directions for its discipline.
In “Ecocide in Ukraine,” Tsymbalyuk addresses the environmental devastation of contemporary war through the emerging framework of ecocide, linking ecological destruction with cultural memory, environmental justice and global legal debates.
Tracing the history and geography of the Ukrainian conflict, the publication highlights the environmental costs of war, initiating salient conversations around war and environmental destruction, ecocide and environmental justice, and war ecologies. A truly transdisciplinary book, “Ecocide in Ukraine” engages with questions of human and environmental relation within a larger global context of political conflicts and environmental crises.
The review committee shares: “A timely contribution to scholarship in conflict studies and environmental studies, ‘Ecocide in Ukraine’ considers the human and nonhuman consequences of war and its destructive capacities. Personal narrative, place-based storytelling, and concrete environmental examples make complex ecological and legal concepts accessible to a broad audience. Lyrical prose and vivid environmental description sustain strong narrative engagement while conveying the book’s analytical insights.”
The institute is proud to award this impressive piece of scholarship. In the fall, Tsymbalyuk will deliver a lecture at the book award ceremony.
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This year, four books were shortlisted including:
- “Desert Distortion: Revealing the Abundance of Contemporary Borderlands Ecologies” by Celina Osuna
- “Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science" by Colin Williamson
- "Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland: Race and Redevelopment in the Rust Belt” by Rebecca Jo Kinney
- “Canfield Drive: A History of Race and the American City on a Street in St. Louis” by Matthew Knox Averett