Religion and War in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine since 2014, and especially since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, finds a parallel as a religious proxy war. Religion in the Russian-Ukrainian war has served as a basis for nation-building and decolonization, for state-building, and for humanitarian relief; it has also been the source of social and political polarization. This project takes stock of the profound impact of war on religious life in Ukraine since the invasion and launches an international conversation about the role the range of Ukrainian religious groups -- Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim---can play in social reconciliation after the war.
It involves two key components. The first is an event: an interdisciplinary, international, and hybrid conference, "Religion and War in Ukraine: The Political, the Public, and the Possible," held at the University of Alberta in March 2024. This is the first conference dedicated to the consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian war on religion in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Speakers explore the full range of experiences of a broad cross-section of religious groups in Ukraine and offer analyses of the role they might play in the aftermath of war. Revised conference presentations will be published as a special double issue of Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes. The second component is an outreach project: the hosting of the "Destroyed Temples of Ukraine" photographic exhibition at the University of Alberta, together with the publication of interviews with project participants on the Forum for Ukrainian Studies blog.
