Rostyslav Kasyanenko

Rostyslav Kasyanenko is a historian specializing in medieval heraldry of Central and Eastern Europe. His research interests include territorial heraldry of Rus’ from the princely era to the nineteenth century, the heraldic identity of the Western Slavs, partikular the Obodrites and Rügen Fürsten, the German genealogy of the Romanov dynasty, as well as the heraldic traditions of Eastern Europe.
He has explored the transmission, adaptation, and symbolic meanings of heraldic motifs across regions, published on the evolution of Pomeranian heraldry during and after Christianisation, parallels between symbolism and myth in Hryhoriy Skovoroda’s thought, and the cultural debates of the post-war Ukrainian diaspora. Kasyanenko is a member of the Ukrainian Heraldry Society and the Association of German Archivists, curator of heraldic teams, and editor of Herboznavstvo (“Heraldry Studies”) and the Armiger Report.
As the archivist of the Ukrainian Free University, he received a NUMO scholarship from the German Library Association for his project on Ukrainian refugees in DP camps. In 2025, he was the only participant from Ukraine at the XXIII Colloquium of the International Academy of Heraldry as recipient of the Antti Matikkala Bursary awarded by the Societas Heraldica Scandinavica