Debat 'Book Discussion: Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine - Hear our voices'

It will bring together the editor of the book, Dr Maryna Shevtsova (KU Leuven), its contributors - Dr Mariya Shcherbyna (Politecnico di Torino, V. Dahl’s East Ukrainian National University) and Dr Olga Zvyeryeva (V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine), as well as the discussant Dr Diana T. Kudaibergenova (University of Cambridge). The event is organised the Ukraine-plus Knowledge Center at Ghent University with the support of FLAX Foundation and Emma Goldman Award.

Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine: Hear Our Voices aims to give voices to feminist scholars from Ukraine and the wider Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. This volume, recognizing the long-neglected nature of the war evolving since 2014, offers a compilation of essays contributed by scholars spanning diverse disciplines and practitioners alike. Employing a wide array of data sources and methodologies—encompassing archival research, media analysis, legal examination, surveys, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and feminist autoethnography—this book undertakes a broader exploration of how gender norms have been transgressed and cultural expectations of womanhood and manhood have evolved within the context of Ukraine from 2014–2023. Representing an early collaborative effort among Ukrainian and CEE feminist scholars, this compilation aims to showcase locally nurtured perspectives on Russia's invasion of Ukraine to a worldwide audience, with the overarching goal of sparking the development of fresh methodologies and approaches that can untangle the complex interconnection between gender and warfare.

Biographies of the speakers

Maryna Shevtsova is a Senior FWO Fellow with KU Leuven, Belgium. She was an MSCA-Cofund EUTOPIA Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, a Swedish Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lund (2020) and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florida, USA (018/19). Her recent publications include the book LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey: Exporting Europe? (Routledge 2021) and edited volume LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Resistance, Representation, and Identity (with Radzhana Buyantueva, Palgrave Macmillan 2019). She also won the 2022´s Emma Goldman Award for her engagement in feminist research and human rights activism.

Olga Zvyeryeva is a sociolinguist, poet, PhD in Linguistics (Germanic Languages) from V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, author of 12 referenced articles and 2 book chapters. The thesis titled “Communication strategies of siblings in English” explored the self-identification and dominance in siblings’ communication. In 2014 her focus switched on studying the demarcation of Russian and Ukrainian borderland identities. As an external researcher with Tilburg University, Department of Culture Studies, she was also conducting research on linguistic landscape of Ukrainian and Russian borderlands, as well as on language contact and hybridization in everyday speech and poetry. Her scientific interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, borderland identities, language contacts, multilingualism and language mixing, and war-induced changes in Ukrainian (language) identities.

Mariya Shcherbyna (Maria Shcherbina) is an associate professor at V. Dahl’s East Ukrainian National University is a gender and anti-discrimination expert. She served on the Anti-Discrimination Commission for Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and is a lecturer at the Gendermuseum in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She also authored and coordinated the international project «Beading theWomantory» for the Gendermuseum. She is an author of multiple articles and book chapters. After fleeing from Kharkiv with her son and huge dog, currently she is a research fellow at Politecnico di Torino, Turin Academy of Sciences Fellow, part of the Gender Research Group focusing on gender studies, womantory/HerStory and war-induced changes in women's practices and identities, myth, stereotypes, and everyday life.

Diana T. Kudaibergenova is Assistant Professor in Political Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Previously, she held a postdoctoral position at the Lund University Sociology of Law Department and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the GCRF-funded COMPASS project at the Centre of Development Studies at POLIS Department at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on different intersections of power relations through realms of political sociology dealing with concepts of state, nationalising regimes, and ideologies. Her first book, Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature (Lexington, 2017) deals with the study of nationalism, modernisation, and cultural development in modern Kazakhstan. Her second book Toward Nationalizing Regimes. Conceptualizing Power and Identity in the Post-Soviet Realm focuses on the rise of nationalising regimes in post-Soviet space after 1991 with a prime focus on power struggles among the political and cultural elites in democratic and non-democratic states (Pittsburgh University Press, 2020). 

Míla O’Sullivan is a Researcher at the Centre for Global Political Economy of the Institute of International Relations in Prague, with a primary focus on feminist security studies. Through her focus on gender and war, the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda, gender and foreign policy, she explores institutions of security governance, foreign policies of Central European countries, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her research also addresses decolonial issues, the politics of knowledge production, and East-West feminist dialogue. She also serves as an academic adviser on gender in Czech foreign policy in various government and non-government bodies. She is a Lecturer of Feminist International Relations at Charles University in Prague.