Concluding remarks by Kornelia Konczal, Annette Werberger and Claudia Dathe for the Conference “War and eace in Ukraine: Reflecting, studying and engaging across disciplines, 12-14th October 2023 at Bielefeld University. The conference was mainly organized by Prof. Dr. Kornelia Konczal (Bielefeld University).
Further information to the goal of this conference can be found at: https://aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/event/war-and-peace-in-ukraine-reflecting-studying-and-engaging-across-disciplines/2023-10-13/
Further information on Kornelia Konczal can be found at:
https://ekvv.uni-bielefeld.de/pers_publ/publ/PersonDetail.jsp?personId=324825085
Further information on Annette Werberger can be found at:
https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/lw/osteuropa/Professurinhaberin/index.html
Further information on Claudia Dathe can be found at:
https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/lw/osteuropa/EUTIM-Projekt/EUTIM-Forschungsteam/Projektkoordinatorin/Claudia-Dathe/index.html
Video team information:
Recording/directing/editing: Nikita Malinovskii and Anna-Lea Krampe with support from Kyra Meierkort and Moritz Schädler
Contact: video-geschichte@uni-bielefeld.de
Department of History, Faculty of History, Philosophy and Theology, Bielefeld University
uh and I will explain you what we want to do with these concluding remarks um so this very last part of the program and concl will uh consists of three parts first we will ask Claudia dat uh who uh was so kind to join us thank you for making this possible francisa um who will tell us a couple of words about the conference that took place in Yen and ended yesterday and what and had more or less the same aim that we had today but focused more on literature and Linguistics and we are very happy to learn from Claudia what was discussed there and what was uh agreed upon then the second step will be a concluding remark provided by aneta verer about today so it will be a concluding remark related to the present and then um the final third step will be a concluding remark by myself about uh what could be the followup so it will be a kind of attempt to tell a bit more about future so that’s our idea and you can see there are two more chairs over there because you all because we wanted to play the first b game again so after our comments if you still have something that you want to ask or share just feel please feel free to come to the fall and when people stop coming this will mean that uh we would have the final word by Y and then we move forward to the restaurant okay so um I would ask Ana to introduce da in a couple of words so CL was asked a minute about um go to introduce you and I think it’s it’s a very easy task she’s the best one of my best colleagues in in vatrina she’s um a great translator especially a very rare translator also for Ukrainian poetry but you could also translate from Russian and from polish she is an hidden expert on Ukrainian avangard I have to say she has something translated but is there’s more to come she’s a great inspiration also in networking so she knows a lot of um in Ukrainian intellectuals and trans Slaters in Germany and overseas um and um yeah she has also the spus for din so last year she’s very active in in fields I I don’t know about and yeah great I have you here Claudia we met only Le yesterday and um um I’m also very curious what you said yesterday we couldn’t hear it anymore because we were already on the tra about our conference in y yeah hello from y I’m still here and so it’s a good opportunity uh for me to share our experience and uh our forms of exchange and thank you for inviting me and thank you anetta to your nice introduction which was overwhelming for me and uh yeah a bit too much of Honor um I would uh I would like to to uh share our exchange uh results from the two days we spent in Yen together so the main so we’ve had two main aims one aim was in the direction of topic and and research and we try to bring bring together literary Scholars uh linguist linguists and uh historians and we try to learn from each other what their uh approaches and um um current research topics are so we’ve had to look into um current uh historical uh researches but yesterday we’ve had a strong focus on Linguistics and literary studies and we learned a lot especially from the linguists in terms of uh multi-year Ling um lingual approaches also uh we’ve learned a lot of uh field study and saw how literary studies in the field of language could also be uh connected and intertwined so this was one field where we just tried to jump into uh different research areas and try to to open interfaces uh for future uh cooporation and the second part uh which was much shorter and unfortunately uh Alex and anetta couldn’t attend because they have already had already left for beeld uh was a focus on structure building so we ask ourselves uh what could we um what could we imagine for the next one two years to have uh on concrete steps to develop uh Ukrainian topics in research in transfer and also in teaching at universities and we all agreed on uh the result that it would be very difficult uh to have a separate development of Ukrainian studies at German universities as resources and personel staff but also in additional projects are very limited and uh so I can just um uh I can just name some of the uh concrete results we agreed on so uh there is in the air the idea of one or two or several or how how how many it ever may be Ukrainian centers and we all agreed on that it would not be enough to open one Center where all the initiatives could be concentrated because uh we will have no exchange and no yeah no no development uh so the idea would be that two or three at least universities could be centers of this future intense Ukrainian studies where different um uh fields and and different disciplines could be combined and intertwined and um there was also the idea that we um all that that different universities could contribute to those centers so we wouldn’t just Outsource it to one or two universities but would try uh to have uh connections to the others as well uh but there was also uh one significant problem marked that um we uh we are responsible not only for the development of Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian studies but also for the other small languages uh namely Bell Russian but uh there was also mentioned the position of uh languages like polish cck and uh slak for instance and then um one uh additional idea uh was uh to have a summer school I mean it’s not new we have already a summer school in G but we all agreed on this that this format could be developed more than it is today and then uh somebody came up with the idea that we could plan uh to have a congress with uh different disciplines one in two years uh and they took took the example from the Polish studies Congress which takes place uh once in two years so that were mainly the very concrete results and we agreed on uh some uh also practical issues like to do podcasts or uh to set up a working group to work on a Ukrainian history of literature and um as one maybe as one of the main results uh we could mention that the Ukrainian Institute has agreed on uh supporting such activities during the next years so they were also present on the conference in uh indana and they would also like uh yeah to support um all activities which will takes take place during the next years in in Academia it’s obvious that the Ukrainian in hasn’t got a lot of money and maybe the support could be more symbolic one uh but it’s very important that they just um agreed uh to budget it for the next two years so that we can at least uh set up a working group and have a followup meeting uh next year that’s the main lines and if you have some questions or if I should go into detail as far as the research Works presented is concerned so just tell me okay thank you very much you know the rules if you have questions you just come come here to us and and ask them uh if not I’ll just ask aneta to continue yeah not easy to make a kind of summary and I’m sure I have also a certain perspective on what we uh spoke about maybe a very important point was um the the beginning with Andre about the gaps um in our history of Ukrainian studies from 1796 you could say until today and I I know already uh Andre work a little bit and the most astonishing thing are all these big gaps in our history of Ukrainian studies you could say and that’s remarkable I can’t imagine another European country uh in which we German institutions have so much um gaps and um yeah lack of research in in such a big um um for such a big country maybe bellus but that’s another case um so that’s um a very important thing to maybe to remember also um why these gaps evolved and not to go into this cycle once again to to to speak about our um experience and not to build up um prosperous structures and in institutions uh to um for not having another um uh challenge um in the future um a second thing I noticed is that we had a lot of empirical input today I think it was the the uh the most important thing for today we had um the experience of um Canada experience of uh Norther America of Harvard um of Cambridge uh especially also Poland which was very valuable uh for us and a lot of experience here in the first panels um about Munich um different places in Germany and also in Switzerland which gave us an Insight you could say we wouldn’t have without this conference that I think this kind of empirical um things is the um most valuable um result um maybe today the differences for me were also if you look of the kind of Institutions and discourse we had today um our guests online spoke mostly and from Canada about um an Ukrainian Institute and Ukrainian institutions Ukrainian um yeah something and we spoke mostly about yeah professorships for is European and there was this discussion is it better to have this kind of big frame or um is it um yeah is it for a future maybe better to have this kind of Ukrainian Institute in in in Germany or um also um in Switzerland and I think that’s very different to talk about changing um uh um one Professor or one small Institute with a small program of Ukrainian studies or maybe a module on in a in a master program and to speak about an uh institution uh which is already 50 years old or or 100 years old so that’s that’s already a big difference and one my might wonder why we don’t have this kind of Ukrainian studies in in Germany um and probably also in France and in um Italy um so for me I saw a lot of Engagement m a lot of Engagement in various directions engagements as transfer into society engagement in our universities engagement in our institutions engagement to make uh our this interdisciplinary work um public and more visible we have a lot of different scholar and it’s not um normal I think that for for outside of the field that a historian uh language language scholar a lecturer and a literary scholar from different with different areas of expertise are working together to to do something for Ukrainian studies so it’s remark remark remarkable in peray and I don’t think you could see something like that in in German studies um similar and um yeah the most the differences the most yeah our struggle was about our visions of the status quo I think we have different wish uh uh um Visions um and um you could say um a different view about how we work actually today as a status quo for Ukrainian studies and in Ukrainian studies I’m of the group of the most iCal group I think we have still a lack of Ukrainian studies and we have to change a lot to promote it and to give a a better future to Ukrainian studies everybody you remarked told now we have a small time frame still a year or two years we have to make it now BL also said it so it’s and I heard it also from kuger already 2014 he said it to me now we have to do something for Ukrainian status we if we don’t do it now we won’t do it for another 20 or 30 years so it’s I think that’s very important that we have in mind that it’s a small time um frame for our program of change you could say so differently we see it but it’s very important to engage maybe people from outside from politics from social politic from um um politic at universities also maybe from institutions like CR giving institutions um to to take this um this time for us and yeah um yeah maybe I could make a kind of Point here and add something afterwards thank you a lot um we also the main question from today is how much strategic essentialism does the colonization need that is for me the the main intention um but I should not talk about today I should actually talk about um what could follow um what what would could be the followup um we are at the moment at what is called in German Z I mean I think the the English term for this does not exist perhaps like kind of predetermined Breaking Point the DI the dictionary says but it’s not the same thing means we can just now go go home and it was and it was a nice exchange supported by the federal man for Education research and that’s all and we do not want this to be the case we want to we want to have a followup and um what doesn’t mean so there certainly will be um two forms of follow up because um Helen leonti thank you again for this agreed to write a report in English for um age called how called in German and we are very grateful for this so there will be a document um a kind of Report with summarizing the main the main uh lessons learned during the event uh we also have we also have um a workshop report written in Ukrainian by Sana feno thank you also very much for this possibly for ukra perhaps for nor um um Ukrainian media but we want to have more and in order to make this possible can you please share the slide with a QR code and in order Q code slide and in order to make this possible yeah we create a shed drive a shed Drive um and you can have access when using this Q code and on this shed drive we will we already posted some things to to document this event like the program the biographical notes we’ll also love to post your email addresses so that you can communicate among with each other after the event but um and some and some pictures um but what we actually want to do is to encourage you to open a file which is called um brainstorming and to share uh with us there all the hints ideas references to books projects fun funding opportunities and so on that you’ve mentioned because many of us was trying were trying to take notes but even I and I am a good multitasking I didn’t manage to note it to to to note and um to to remember everything so it would be really nice if you could share all these ideas names links books and institutions that you mentioned so that so that the communication really can can deep can can can become a bit more deepen um deeper because and that’s uh the second call for Action what we actually would love to do yav and and I um is to um write a working paper a working paper on how to teach Ukrainian history ger universities and uh we do not know at this moment how to do it but we would like to formulate this open call for office here in this room and would like invite everyone who’s interesting interested in being part of this group work and working paper just to write um a short email to Y and and me and uh it would be terrific if we could do this before the 20 25th of October I will post the deadline again in the mail with a great thank you to you all um and then in the Second Step U we will meet with those interested in cooperating on zoom and trying to figure out um how to translate All This brilliant thoughts and ideas and suggestions that were gathered into something that could be sustainable uh so the idea of the working paper would be to try to describe a situation where we are and um try to gather best practices and very simple ideas for future what to do in order to improve the situation a bit um so that’s a very simple idea but perhaps uh perhaps also powerful um so now the the floor is really yours if you have questions ideas comments um please feel free to join us on this in spish Bow and ask them may I ask Claudia I mean I think we didn’t have so much um linguists um here in this um room probably I don’t know but we had a lot of linguist and for me linguists are always very important I didn’t want to study a lot of linguistics to be honest but without linguists uh historians and literary historians and cultural historians can’t um keep um uh program of language learning so um if you don’t have linguists who are sustaining language learning in institutions it’s like a lost case to to to push for more languages or for learning um more languages um in the Stu uh student program so what did the linguists say at the end was there another view then um from the cultural studies and literary studies and people and the historians Claudia oh I I I didn’t see significant differences between linguists and uh literary Scholars but maybe there were some differences between the Ukrainian participants and the original uh let’s say uh um Scholars from German University who go there or who have been working there for a lot of years so uh it is very important or one of this aspects was that is very important uh to create um new approaches to link Ukrainian colleagues and the the German uh University programs and also structures because it is uh one line uh to support the implementation of uh Ukrainian studies knowledge into the German Academia but is it is another line to include people and their careers and um and I I I see a lot of uh successful attempts uh by the linguists in y for instance so renfeld has opened a research uh project on a different Ukrainian corpora ATA and he’s invited two or three linguists to to work with him in Gana and he is quite successful and uh as as yeah and and uh maybe we can just think about uh how to um how to combine his experience uh with the questions the others mentioned by by implementing let’s say literary Scholars and um another point so and and yeah and and I I thought that um um some of the uh colleagues from the Linguistics um they’ve they’ve already settled up um a lot of um field studies with Ukrainian universities uh which are also in a very difficult uh uh stage at the moment because they cannot uh be Carri out obviously and so we should also uh think about um how to support uh Ukrainian colleagues who uh are still in the country and uh obviously you have already talked also about digital Ukraine if I’m not wrong uh but I don’t know how long this program will last and uh obviously um it it will need a lot of a lot of effort uh yeah to to to um to continue the work with the colleagues who either stood in the country or returned uh now after their scholarships had finished yeah but we have a first question B um yeah I was just going back to a to to the what what was what I said earlier and I think it is something we need to maybe think about in the long term uh the like the the people from the disciplines who are not here political science um perhaps in particular it’s also very interesting that in the ger debate the expertise on Ukraine is mostly coming I would say from historians um and and that’s actually quite remarkable um that that historians are asked to be to to comment the the present um uh so much and um and of course political scientists are also in in in the debate and some of them are very from entering from a different different yeah well there are very good political scientists in the debate um um also not so good but anyway um but I I I do I I do Wonder um how how one could establish Communications going Beyond only um I mean I know we had quenel inasa originally on the program and she had to cancel um quite late but but I mean she’s she she she’s also an exception in in the field of political uh science uh with with her focus on um on Ukraine so um I think we we should um think about why this was so much dominated by by questions about stonic studies and Eastern European history and and not so much political science or other uh disciplines more more actually more engaged with with the the present but that’s more of a comment maybe only maybe maybe I may answer we don’t have a a common place to to meet we have the slavist forand we have historical forand and we don’t have a kind of Eastern European for band uh area studies and um and that’s also a kind of problem sometimes maybe in this uh situation to be honest I’m I started in 88 uh to study SL lonic studies and uh easn European history short afterward the Yugoslav War so doing Slavic studies in Eastern European or Southeastern European studies was always a field which is very involved in European um history you could say and um so I I think we have this kind of like of common like the AC conference yeah we don’t have a German AC conference as far I see and that’s um um uh Alec um I’m very proud that my colleagues from philology are so engaged because philology is a very apolitical sence some sometimes and I’m very happy that we did something for it in the last two years but I think it would be much appreciated to have much more exchange on an Institutional level um but yeah that’s maybe not a time now but maybe after we um resolved some um engagement for Ukraine we can start another engagement please sorry I I don’t want to take time for no it’s okay I just want also wanted to comment on this so actually the first course on Ukraine here in Z University which I uh was able to join was on sociology it was taught about Ukrainian civil society and I think that was really a topic which I personally missed in this three days because almost it was almost not not mentioned but I think for sociologists the Ukrainian Civil Society since 2004 is actually quite a phenomenon in Europe and I think it deserves it’s it’s separate research and its separate representation in in teaching as well and also the question which I came with here is should we go a little bit beyond this so um of course the their topic is the Ukrainian past and present in Ukraine in in German universities but also some speakers I think aleny mentioned that they also have public events and I also wonder what do you think about this should we also think of so podcasts were mentioned I think recently was one of the decisions also should we Al should we think about it a bit more should we include it in our agenda even if it would not be a priority thank you for civil society I’m from the Vina and we have Susan that’s why um she knows a lot about Civil Society in Ukraine and tell a lot that’s but maybe U unfortunately she couldn’t she couldn’t come you know yeah I imagine she has a lot to do now yeah uh as for the transfer idea um yeah I very much agree but uh on Thursday evening we had a kind of illustration of how difficult it is to interest the public for even such a absolutely brilliant event like a Q&A with a um price winner although you you know how much we did to interest people so uh yes definitely we should but it’s not easy but I think also transfer I’m I’m very for transfer we do a lot of things with um authors and writers and everything but I’m also somehow oldfashioned with transfer if you look about for example um now it’s it’s different but at the beginning of the world you had a lot of struggle also with a journalistic view on Ukraine so um educating students who are going then in offices in politics in in journalism in I don’t know um also being a mayor somewhere or doing um other stuff in economics being um um it’s very important that they also participate maybe in future in in smaller programs um on um central eastern Europe and in Ukraine especially so I think it’s very important that the kind of um expert is going into professionals future professionals that we don’t have this kind of um lack of expertise and it’s always uh it’s very much about Eastern Central Europe we don’t have this kind of expertise uh in professionals on Poland on on the baltics um on Southeastern Europe on on the Balkans so it’s very important that we um in give much more input in in the education of students in different fields who are then responsible in somehow um in in what Germany is doing in foreign politics or transferring um expertise in in other countries so it’s I think there’s a big lack of regional knowledge in comparison to 30 years ago when I studied we had still a lot of regional studies in polit politics in sociology in geography and then in the ’90s everybody thought you know the story English is enough theory is enough it’s also the time of theory we have to remember that we we thought that with Theory you could do everything you don’t have a kind of experience to introduce or language knowledge and um I think it’s very important also to have this in mind that a future generation of students who is not doing is European studies should through a kind of stum or some kind of yeah um a little bit of knowledge of central eastern Europe and not only on Ukraine should should know something in the future do we don’t have this kind of uh yeah generations of politicians who doesn’t know anything about Poland czechia Slovakia and and I think that’s also very important not only making something for pensioners who are interested in in literature but for the Young Generation who speaks in English fluently not like me for example but doesn’t know a lot about European um cultures Beyond American and English speaking world because we have Netflix and everything there so that’s and I think that’s very important to raise this uh kind of awareness that Europe has this kind of diversity yeah for small languages and everything and we don’t have it we have a awareness but not for this kind of um thing and so I I I hope I don’t see another war in my uh Generations combined with Slavic studies somehow yeah I remember very well when my students Alexander you probably also was a students from Yugoslavia and then a year or half a year later I knew he’s from Bosnia and she’s from Serbia and there’s from Croatia and we had debates and debates about differences in in in Yugoslavia I learned a lot about Yugoslavia then and I did study polish and Ukrainian bellarus and um Russia so it’s maybe a very person personal note you have one more comment or question from we can not hear it yet I I just want yeah I just wanted to to add um a couple of ideas to the question which raised um at the moment and I think this is also a question of structures so what we saw last year uh the scholars from the field of history and also literary Scholars to a certain extent also linguists uh tried to do everything so we tried to support the refugees uh we tried to uh do U seminaries workshops and uh a lot of um public events and then it turned out that we didn’t managed to follow up with our scientific work and uh I think now and this also assign why we are providing this conferences now we are at the point where we see that we have to take decisions as stragic decisions where to go so obviously it’s very important to have uh the transfer into society uh nobody will doubt this but the question is who is going to do this in the future and what should we do to encourage people and to enable people to do this because because it is obvious that we will not manage to change the structures to do our research and to do the transfer simultaneously and therefore it is my V to um to go into the development of structures to go to go into fundraising to have at least one or two centers uh at universities which can uh do all the three uh uh can manage to support all three Fields uh of Engagement that is research that is teaching and that is also transfer but we will not manage the resources we we have today this is obvious and uh sometimes uh I think probably we we should just keep silent and not give interviews anymore and not write newspaper articles anymore so that everybody can understand that if if we don’t uh uh do our our research work we will not uh be able to give new and differentiated answers so one of the questions we raised uh during our conference in yenna uh was uh the analytic language and uh the uh sustainable need and new Notions but uh in which way we are going to develop this Notions so nobody will come up and uh surprisingly will have developed the Notions uh from one day to the other about we will have to uh have conferences have to think about it we have to go go to the theories and that will take time and uh this is uh time which we cannot spend uh on public panels so we will have to think how to transfer that how anetta said uh to enable professionals to have uh multiplicators and not do all things on our own okay thank you very much for for your words Claudia um if there are no more fishes one thing to share your thoughts and questions with us and I ask our beeld colleagues to give the final very final word just couple of sentences first of all I would like to say that we are very grateful for support for Federal Ministry of Education and Research and we we were very happy to see such brilliant brains here in Beau it was really pleasure and honor us to see all you here so that’s all let’s have a dinner thank you [Applause]