With Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has entered the limelight of world media. Ever since, there has been a demand for expertise on Ukraine, with many more people wishing to go beyond the headlines to familiarise themselves with Ukraine’s past and present. Thus, the invasion gave an impetus for re-evaluating Ukraine as an academic subject, pushing scholars working in area studies as well as East European and Russian history, cultural, literary and social studies, to reconsider how they teach and write the history of the region. 

Despite the relevance of Ukraine for the general public, the academic community, and international affairs, Ukraine still remains a lesser-known country. While there are a few scholarly monographs on Ukraine, there is no recent comprehensive textbook on Ukrainian history that can be used in Western universities and by the general public. To fill in this gap, an important scholarly project has been launched in 2024 – the first-ever handbook of Ukrainian history, edited by Olena Palko (University of Basel), Fabian Baumann (Heidelberg University), and Börries Kuzmany (University of Vienna), to be published in 2028. The handbook is under contract with Oxford University Press, the leader in academic publishing in the world.

This conference will become a milestone in this project, bringing together leading scholars in the field of modern European and Eastern European history, both from Western academic institutions and Ukraine, who have agreed to contribute to this handbook survey of Ukrainian history. At Monte Verità, they will discuss their individual contributions and identify general patterns in history writing, as well as the contours shaping our discipline in the future. During the conference, scholars will benefit from small group discussions, scholarly exchanges, peer review, and plenaries, shaping the resultant Handbook.

The general goal of the event, as well as the future Handbook, is to enhance historical understanding, foster critical thinking about Ukraine, and revisit the country’s place in Europe and the world. By encouraging dialogue across academic traditions, the conference will identify important aspects of how scholars of Ukraine can influence major scholarly debates, as well as test potential avenues for applying unorthodox theoretical and methodological models to Ukrainian studies.