December 12, 18:00-19:30 CET

With Regina Elsner, Oleksandr Lysenko and Frank Sysyn, moderated by Ricarda Vulpius.

Registration

The webinar will focus on discussing the great impact the war has on the religious situation in Ukraine, above all on the Orthodox Churches. Through very different lenses, speakers will address the complexity of the relationship both between the state and the churches and between the churches themselves. The seminar will examine the historical dimension of the relationship between state and church in light of the Russian imperial and Soviet legacy as well as the evolution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. It will highlight the instrumentalization of the Russian Orthodox Church in the current war and will also reflect on the challenge religious freedom represents for the Ukrainian state at war. By reflecting on both historical and contemporary contexts, the seminar aims to foster dialogue on the future of the relationship between state and church in Ukraine.

The speakers will be:

• Frank Sysyn, University of Alberta (Canada)
• Oleksandr Lysenko, National Academy of Sciences (Ukraine)
• Regina Elsner, University of Münster (Germany)

The panel will be chaired by Ricarda Vulpius, University of Münster (Germany). At the end of the webinar, there will be a Q&A section where questions from the audience will be addressed. The seminar will be held in Ukrainian and English with simultaneous translation.

To participate, please register here. A recording of the seminar will be published on the Youtube channel of the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission.

The seminar series is a joint initiative by the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Ukraine-based scholarly journal "Ukraina Moderna. We thank for the sponsorship by the German Academic Exchange service (DAAD) with funds of the German Foreign Ministry.