The decolonization of education and research in Belarus and Ukraine: theoretical challenges and practical tasks

A conference held at the European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania) in late September 2023 brought together scholars and practitioners from countries directly implicated by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The conference's rationale was to re-examine the social structures and content of knowledge production and dissemination in countries that used to be categorized as the post-Soviet region at a time when the former metropole weaponizes the humanities for justifying the war and re-colonizing newly occupied territories. With reference to the agenda formulated by such decolonial scholars as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Madina Tlostanova, and Walter Mignolo - to decolonize the mind and to delink from hegemonic narratives and structures of power-knowledge imposed from the imperial centre - the participants discussed possibilities for future cooperation in a de-centred, horizontal manner, and they attempted to outline new epistemologies that derive from re-discovering themselves and communicating their emergent identities outwards. Standing as a decolonizing gesture itself, the conference created a multilingual space where participants communicated in their mother tongues to express perspectives embedded in their local experiences. The conference was co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv) and Charles University (Prague) with the financial support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, administered by the American Council of Learned Societies.

Automated summary

A conference was held at the European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithuania in late September 2023, bringing together scholars and practitioners from countries affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The conference aimed to re-evaluate the social structures and content of knowledge production and dissemination in the region formerly categorized as the post-Soviet region, as well as discuss possibilities for future cooperation in a de-centred and horizontal manner, exploring new epistemologies that derive from rediscovering themselves and communicating their emergent identities outwards.