When: Tuesday, 20 June 2023, 18:30
Where: University of Vienna, Department of Political Science, Konferenzraum (room A222), NIG, Universitätsstr. 7, 2nd floor, 1010 Vienna
Speaker: Maryna Shevtsova (University of Ljubljana)
Chair: Eszter Kováts (IPW | University of Vienna)
Abstract
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sparked a fierce global feminist debate bringing into the discussion an uncomfortable question of Western privilege and power imbalance in knowledge production within academia and beyond it. Through the past year numerous Central and Eastern European feminist scholars called for the decolonial approach to challenge Western domination in the discussion of peace prospects in the region. Yet what do we mean when we speak of ‘plural’ or ‘feminist’ approach to negotiating peace? And will there be a place for Ukrainian feminists at that negotiation table? This talk draws on the ongoing discussion occurring in growing regional feminist networks that try to challenge the idea of global feminist solidarity and sisterhood while also reflecting on experiences of various (vulnerable) groups affected by this war.
Maryna Shevtsova (PhD) is a EUTOPIA Postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Arts, the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Maryna Shevtsova was a Swedish Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gender Studies Department at the University of Lund in 2020 and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florida, USA, in 2018/19. Her most recent publications include the book LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey: Exporting Europe? (Routledge 2021) and edited volumes LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Resistance, Representation, and Identity (with Radzhana Buyantueva, Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and LGBTI Asylum Seekers and Refugees from a Legal and Political Perspective: Persecution, Asylum, and Integration (with Arzu Guler and Deniz Venturi, Springer, 2019). She is also a winner of the 2022´s Emma Goldman award for her engagement in feminist research and human rights activism. She currently works on an edited volume Feminist perspectives on Russia’s war in Ukraine to be published later this year with Lexington Books.
