(Re)articulation of Spaces and Memories: Post-Euromaidan Ukraine

Temporal and cross-regional comparison of changes in narratives about the past in the post Euromaidan Ukraine will be discussed with a specific focus on peculiarities of symbolic (re)articulation of spaces under question (Crimea, occupied Donbas territories) and influence of the massive resettlement of affected population on reimagining the past.

In addition a new MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine “Memory and Identity” module, which makes use of the latest innovations in information technology to advance research on Ukraine, will be presented. It allows researchers to explore and explain intraregional and cross-regional differences and similarities in the changing social and political context of 2013 and 2015 Ukraine. In particular, this project contributes to the comparative cross-regional analysis of identities and historical memory in today’s Ukraine using the most recent sociological survey data.

Viktoriya Sereda is a GIS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (2016-2017). Her research focuses on urban sociology, memory studies, nationalism and identity studies. Viktoriya Sereda received her PhD in Sociology at the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2006, and her MSc by Research in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh in 2001. Since 2015 she has been an associate professor of sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Recently she co-organized and participated in sociological research projects: "Region, nation, and beyond. An Interdisciplinary and transcultural reconceptualization of Ukraine", “Displaced cultural spaces: current Ukrainian refugees” (both based at the University of St.Gallen), and “Present Ukrainian refugees: main reasons, strategies of resettlement, difficulties of adaptation.”  She is author of a number of articles published in Ukrainian, Austrian, German, Hungarian, Polish and Russian academic journals. Her forthcoming publications include: “Shifts in national, regional and local memories and identities in post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” in Nationalities Papers (coming in 2017); “Ukrainian Past and Present: Legacies, Memory and Attitudes” (co-authored with A.Liebich and O.Myshlovska), in Ulrich Schmid, ed. Unity in Diversity: Region and Nation in Ukraine (Budapest: CEU Press, coming in 2017).