Friday 24 February 2023, 4:00–5:30pm

Forum Theatre

Level One, Arts West building

University of Melbourne Parkville campus

We invite you to mark one year of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion. Wars dehumanise. To rehumanise, we have to make people and societies real. Making others real is what universities should be about. On the one-year anniversary we want you to encounter Ukraine as a proud sovereign nation with a mighty culture and to experience the vital role universities play at times of war.

Twelve months since 24.2.22, and nine years since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, the physical structures of many universities across the nation have been partially or fully destroyed but their indispensable work goes on. University classes are held in bomb shelters. No electricity – students and lecturers use phones or candles; no internet at home – they Zoom into their classes from shops and streets. Some lecturers continue teaching from the trenches, having joined the army to fight the occupiers.

Universities matter in Ukraine. They give students knowledge to fight and survive this war, imagination to conjure a future on the other side of Russia’s defeat, and skills to rebuild their society when the war is over. Universities matter in Australia too. They can cut through indifference and fatigue by encouraging knowledge, connections and curiosity as the basis for solidarity and action.

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It is in this spirit that we invite you to hear from scholars and students in Ukraine and Australia on:

• how Ukrainian universities operate in times of war and under occupation
• the role of universities in justice-seeking, war crime documentation and decolonial praxis
• Ukrainian journalists taking on the Russian propaganda industrial complex
• the acute power of Zelensky’s speeches and more.

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Speakers include:

Professor Tony Birch, the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature (University of Melbourne)

Dr Julie Fedor (SHAPS, University of Melbourne)

Evgeniya Horbunova and Yana Mytsko (journalism students, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University)

Professor Olena Hurko (Oles Honchar Dnipro National University)

Professor Natalia Kudriavtseva (Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University / Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst)

Dr Olga Maxwell (SOLL, University of Melbourne)

Emeritus Professor of Ukrainian Studies Marko Pavlyshyn (Monash University)

Associate Professor Galyna Piskorska (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University / ‘Scholars at Risk’ program, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne)

Associate Professor Maria Tumarkin (SCC, University of Melbourne)

Ada Wordsworth (KHARPP – The Kharkiv and Przemyśl Project / University of Oxford)

Dr Yevhen Zakharchenko (School of History, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University)

Ukrainian songs will be performed by Billie Tumarkin (soprano) and Alex Burkoy (violinist).

This event is a joint initiative of the School of Culture and Communication (SCC), School of Languages and Linguistics (SOLL), and School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (SHAPS) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne.

For more information, and to book your seat, please register via the link:

withukraine.eventbrite.com.au

Participants may also wish to attend the candlelight vigil organised by the Ukrainian community. The vigil will commence at 7:30pm that evening, at Federation Square in Melbourne.

Image credit: Maria Prymachenko, ‘The Threat of War’ (1986) (reproduced with permission from the Maria Prymachenko Family Foundation).