The project of the international conference “Women’s Dimensions of the Past: Ideas, Experiences, Representations” progressed from its original conception as an anniversary event to a large-scale scholarly forum and the publication of an edited volume.
Concept and Goals
The conference was conceived as a way to mark the 10th anniversary of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History (UARWH), founded in October 2010. The main goal was to discuss the state of research in women’s history in Ukraine, to analyze achievements and challenges, and to chart the prospects for this field in modernizing Ukrainian historical scholarship. The project sought to address questions about the real historical experience of women, their role in social processes, and the ways in which women’s past is represented in culture.
Partnership and Organizing Committee
The conference was co-organized by the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History and the Center for Urban History, with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Ukraine.
The Organizing Committee comprised:
- Oksana Kis — Doctor of Historical Sciences (habilitation equivalent), President of UARWH.
- Sofiia Diak — PhD, Director of the Center for Urban History.
- Ivanna Cherchovych — Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD equivalent), Institute of Ethnology, NAS of Ukraine.
- Mariana Baidak — Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD equivalent), Institute of Ethnology, NAS of Ukraine.
- Olena Stiazhkina — Doctor of Historical Sciences (habilitation equivalent), Institute of History of Ukraine, NAS of Ukraine.
- Kateryna Kobchenko — Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD equivalent), Center for Ukrainian Studies, Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Project coordination and communications were handled by Viktoriia Panas and Mariana Mazurak.
Implementation and Timeline
- Preparatory phase: in mid-March, the Organizing Committee published a call for papers, encouraging the participation not only of established scholars but also of advanced undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students whose research interests lie in the field of gender history.
- Thematic areas: the Organizing Committee proposed 15 broad topics, including women’s everyday life, gendered spaces (city, village, home), women in times of wars and revolutions, women’s rights and feminist practices, women’s images in art and cinema, and the specificity of sources for studying women’s history.
- Selection phase: applications were accepted through June 15, 2020, yielding approximately 100 submissions.
- Change of plans: the conference was originally scheduled for October 2020 but was postponed to the summer of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Interim phase: to sustain scholarly discussion during the pandemic, a series of ten online lectures, “Gender Dimensions of Modernity Spaces,” was carried out from December 2020 through July 2021.
- Conference: the event took place on June 8–11, 2021, in a hybrid format — moderation took place in person at the Center for Urban History, while presentations and discussions were held online via Zoom with simultaneous streaming on YouTube.
Project Outcomes
1. International scholarly forum: a total of 43 researchers from 8 Ukrainian cities and 5 countries (Ukraine, Germany, Poland, the USA, and the United Kingdom) participated in the conference. Learn more about the participants here.
2. The conference program featured 25 presentations across 8 thematic panels. The full conference program is available here.
3. Video archive: full video recordings of all presentations and discussions are available on the Center for Urban History’s YouTube channel:
4. Public resonance: the event attracted considerable attention and a significant audience. Daily livestream viewership exceeded 150, and within the first ten days following the event, the recordings were viewed by over 1,200 people — a clear indication of substantial public interest in women’s and gender history. 5. Edited volume: the culminating result of the project was the book “Women’s Dimensions of the Past: Ideas, Experiences, Representations”, edited by Oksana Kis, which brought together the strongest studies presented at the conference and in the lecture series. The preparation of the volume was complicated by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, but work resumed in the summer of 2022, and final editing and design were completed by mid-2023. The book consists of 22 chapters covering various eras and aspects of women’s experiences.