Keynote speakers
Valery Bulhakaŭ
Independent researcher, ARCHE magazine editor-in-chief. Doctoral thesis “The problem of the national consciousness at the Belarusian philosophical culture at the of 19th — at the beginning 20th centuries (basing on materials of literature)” (Hryhori Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, thesis defended in 2005, promotor Dr. Oksana Zabuzhko).
The sphere of scientific interests: History of nationalism in East and Central Europe; The Political History of Independent Belarus; The Politics of History and The Politics of Memory following 2020 mass-protest in Belarus.
Rasa Čepaitienė
Сultural historian, Doctor of Humanities, employee of the Lithuanian Institute of History, professor at Vilnius University, visiting professor at European Humanities University.
Author of the book Post-Soviet transit: from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the war in Ukraine published this year (in Lithuanian).
Vitaly Chernetsky
Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Kansas. Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania. Past president, American Association for Ukrainian Studies. First Vice President, Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S. President-elect, ASEEES.
Prof. Chernetsky's research focuses on modern and contemporary cultures (literature, film, popular culture) of Ukraine, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, considered in a broader comparative/cross-regional and interdisciplinary contexts. He has also been researching globalization and its cultural aspects, postmodernism/postmodernity, Modernism/modernity, postcolonial theory & writing, questions of identity & community, diasporic cultures, nationalism & ethnicity, and broader issues in literary & cultural theory, cultural studies, film studies, feminist theory, gender studies, and translation studies. Chernetsky is the author of the book Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization (MQUP, 2007; Ukrainian-language version 2013; co-winner, book prize of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies), of five edited or co-edited volumes, and numerous articles and reviews.
Oksana Dovgopolova
Dr. habil. in Philosophy of History, prof. of the Philosophy Department, Odesa I.I.Mechnikov National University, curator of the memory culture platform Past / Future / Art https://pastfutureart.org/en/
The sphere of scientific interests: Social Reconciliation in context of collective memory, Memory Entrepreneurship, Ukrainian regional memories, Odesa city mythology, the architecture of inclusive Historical Narration in Ukraine, transformation of the Odesa local identity in time of russian full-scale invasion.
Oksana Dudko
Oksana Dudko is a historian of 20th-century Europe with a special focus on violence; gender; and the cultural history of Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union.
Currently, Oksana is PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. in History from Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine. Oksana has taught the history of Ukraine, Soviet Union, gender and violence, mass killing and genocide at the University of Saskatchewan, York University, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, and Ukrainian Catholic University. In addition, for more than fifteen years, Oksana has been curating theatre and exhibition projects in Europe. She is a founding director and artistic curator of international theatre and the drama festivals Drabyna and Drama.UA in Ukraine. Dudko’s most recent publication is “Gate-crashing “European” and “Slavic” area studies: can Ukrainian studies transform the fields?” (Canadian Slavonic Papers 2(65) 2023).
Aliaksei Kazharski
Researcher in Charles University; Degree: Ph.D. (philosophiae doctor)
Kazharski’s research interests have included Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, regionalism, identity in international relations, critical approaches to security and terrorism studies. He is the author of two monographs: Eurasian Integration and the Russian World. Regionalism as an Identitary Enterprise (CEUPress, 2019) and Central Europe Thirty Years after the Fall of Communism. A Return to the Margin? (Rowman&Littlefield 2022).
His academic and policy texts can be found at https://cuni.academia.edu/AliakseiKazharski.
James Krapfl
Associate Professor, McGill University (PhD, University of California, Berkeley)
James Krapfl is a cultural historian focusing geographically on modern east central Europe and thematically on the anthropology of revolution. His transformative book on the revolution of 1989, Revolution with a Human Face, developed theoretical frameworks relevant to thinking about decolonization, most notably the contrast between federative and imperial principles of social organization not just at state levels, but at the grass roots and in the mind. Prof. Krapfl is the outgoing editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des slavistes and one of the incoming co-editors of East European Politics & Societies and Cultures. The forum he recently edited for CSP/RCS, “Approaches to Decolonization,” is freely available online through the end of September
(https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rcsp20/collections/approaches-to-decolonization).
Dr Alena Marková is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Historical Sciences of the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University (Czech Republic).
Her main research interests cover contemporary history of Eastern Europe and post-socialist transformation. Dr Marková is the associate editor of The Journal of Belarusian Studies (BRILL), and the principal investigator of numerous educational and research projects (4EU+ Alliance, GAČR, SVV CU, and others). Alena Marková is an expert of the Horizon Europe Programme Committee (Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society configuration) of the Research and Innovation Department of the European Commission. She regularly contributes to the Czech and international media. Her latest publication is "The Path to a Soviet Nation. The Policy of Belarusization" (Paderborn: Brill Schöningh, 2021) and "A History of Belarus" (co-author) (Prague: NLN, 2021).
Andrei Vazyanau
Andrei Vazyanau is a lecturer at European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania) and researcher at Minsk Urban Platform (Belarus/Lithuania)
He holds his PhD in social anthropology from University of Regensburg (2021, title of the project „Infrastructures in Trouble: Public Transit, Crisis, and Citizens at the Peripheries of Europe“). His fieldwork background includes urban ethnography in Donetsk region of Ukraine (Mariupol, Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Horlivka), years 2011-2013; Romania (Galati, Braila, Constanta), years 2015-2016; Belarus (Minsk), 2017-2021. In 2022 and 2023 he delivered humanitarian packages to medical workers in Lviv and Kyiv. Currently, he studies different aspects of everyday life during mass repressions, focusing on the case of Belarus.