The Center was founded with the support of the Ukrainian Association of Bulgarians in 2005.

The Center attempts to support the traditions of the Balkan Studies at the University by developing its primary issues, including the history and culture of the Bulgarian community in Ukraine; to coordinate research and focus on the current trends in the Balkan and Byzantine Studies in Ukraine; to organize conferences, symposiums, seminars, readings, roundtables in the current issues of the Bulgarian, Balkan, and Byzantine Studies; to provide for research visits of lecturers and post-graduates to Bulgaria and other countries of South-Eastern Europe; to support students and other interested persons in their study of the Bulgarian and the Greek languages; to establish a scientific library, archive, and database in the Bulgarian and Balkan Studies; and to initiate direct contacts with universities and humanitarian academic institutions of Bulgaria and other countries of the region to conduct joint projects.

The Center’s research council headed by M.H. Stanchev, doctor of History, consists of 11 doctors of sciences, full professors, and 15 candidates of sciences, associate professors.

Since its foundation, the Center cooperates with the School of History which supported an international conference The History and Culture of Bulgaria in Persons and Images (2005) and the 4th Drinov Readings the Kharkiv School of Bulgarian and Byzantine Studies: the Past, the Present, the Future (2006). Since 2007, the Center has its official publication, the Drinov Collection, which is also an organ of the Ukrainian-Bulgarian Committee of Historians.

During 2007-2010, the Center, together with the Institute of History and the Institute of the Balkan Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, will focus on three international projects, including "The Epistolary Heritage of Marin Drinov"; "Bulgaria and Ukraine; from Eurasian empires to the European Union (mid-18th – early 21st century)"; and "The Caucasus – the Crimea – the Balkans: between Islam and Christianity (late 18th-early 21st century)".