Ever since Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Ukraine has been the focus of attention not only in German public and scientific discourse, but also on a global scale. 

In what way should (and can) Ukraine – and the war in Ukraine – be researched and discussed in all their complexity? How can historical, political, economic and social as well as cultural entanglements be adequately addressed? Which issues or methodological approaches are especially contentious due to ethical considerations or because they presumably ‘play into the hands of the aggressor’? How could a re-orientation of East European and Slavic Studies towards Ukraine be carried out on a methodological, institutional, and structural level? In what ways can the results of such a re-orientation be transferred to decision- and policymakers?

The panel discussion “Navigating Ukrainian Studies in Time of War”, which addresses these issues, is part of the workshop “Decolonizing Ukrainian Studies” (8–9 December 2022) organised by the UNDIPUS project in collaboration with ZOiS and ZfL (Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research). In view of the growing political instrumentalisation of decolonial terminology, it aims to facilitate scholarly dialogue about the prospects of a project to decolonise Ukrainian Studies.

Participants

• Prof. Dr. Gwendolyn Sasse is the Director of the Centre for East European and International Studies and Einstein Professor for the Comparative Study of Democracy and Authoritarianism at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research interests include post-communist transitions, comparative democratization, war, and migration.
• Prof. Dr. Roman Dubasevych studied German philology in L’viv, Freiburg and Graz, as well as literary and political theory in Regensburg. His doctoral thesis dealt with Habsburg nostalgia in post-Soviet Ukraine. He has been a Junior Professor of Ukrainian Cultural Studies in Greifswald and the academic chair of the international summer school “Greifswalder Ukrainicum” since April 2018. His areas of interest include theories of cultural memory, transgenerational trauma, postmodernism, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, pop and rock culture, as well as representations of the war in Donbas. Dr. Dubasevych is an initiator and coordinator of the UNDIPUS project.
• Dr. Maria Mayerchyk has a double affiliation with the University of Greifswald (Philipp Schwartz Fellow) and the Ethnology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Senior Research Fellow). In the past, she was affiliated with Harvard University (USA), Lund University (Sweden), and the University of Alberta (Canada). Dr. Mayerchyk holds a Candidate of Sciences degree in History specializing in Ethnology. She teaches courses on queer, gender, feminism, diaspora, and Slavic folklore in Germany, Canada, and Ukraine. Maria authored/edited seven books in English and Ukrainian. Her last monograph, “Erotic Folklore: Overcoming Modern Design of Sexuality,” is currently being translated into English. Dr. Mayerchyk is a co-founder and joint editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies. Her research interests include decolonial option, queer and feminist epistemologies, Eastern European studies, diaspora studies, and critical folklore studies.
• Chair: Dr. Matthias Schwartz is deputy director of the ZfL, where he heads the program area World Literature and the project World Fiction Post/Socialist. Eastern European Literatures and Cultures.