Halenko is a senior researcher at the Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and an assistant professor of History at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. His research has focused on the northern Black Sea region under Ottoman and Tatar administration in the early modern period, and he has taught courses on Balkan History, the Crimean Khanate, and Ukraine and the Ottoman Empire. In addition to his many journal publications, he is the translator into Ukrainian of Halil Inalcik's The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (Kyiv and Lviv, 1996). While at HURI, Halenko will be working on a monograph on political, economic, demographic and social aspects of the northern Black Sea Ottoman province of Kefe in the sixteenth century.