Breaking Academic Silences: Ukraine and Decolonization of Knowledge
October 27, 2026 | 12:00 EDT | Online
The Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network invites you to the fourth panel in its 2026 event series: a conversation on Ukraine, decolonization, epistemic silences, and the global politics of whose knowledge becomes heard. What kinds of knowledge remain peripheral in society and academia, and who decides what becomes visible, audible, and authoritative? What is omitted by dominant languages and interpretive frameworks? This panel discussion explores epistemic silence as a phenomenon shaped by unequal structures of knowledge that privilege certain languages, regions, archives, and intellectual traditions while marginalizing others. Taking Ukraine’s decolonization processes as a point of departure, the discussion places the ongoing rethinking of Ukrainian and Eastern European Studies in conversation with other global contexts and postcolonial and decolonial scholarship.
The panel focuses on how silences are produced and reproduced in academia in relation to testimonial and hermeneutical injustices (Fricker) and questions of agency, examining how institutional and disciplinary hierarchies shape what is circulated and recognized as legitimate knowledge. It addresses translation, non-translation, and post-imperial frameworks that influence which voices and intellectual traditions gain recognition. The distinction between silence and silencing raises questions about the politics and ethics of making voices heard. The central question of the panel is: Can decolonization also create new silences? We will discuss how, in challenging inherited frameworks and recovering previously marginalized voices, scholars can avoid replacing one hierarchy of knowledge with another, and what experiences across different global contexts reveal about knowledge politics and decoloniality.
Speakers: Myroslav Shkandrij, Iryna Odrekhivska, Jelena Subotic, Gerlov van Engelenhoven
Moderators: Svitlana Biedarieva and Kateryna Yeremieieva (UDSN Executive Board)
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