“Eastern Europe’s Invisibilities: Epistemics, Politics, Arts”
Inaugural Conference of the Institute of Slavic and Eastern European Studies (ISOS) at the University of Zurich, May 6th to 8th, 2026
Invisibility is a political condition of public non-presence. It can be both a product of power and a situation of powerlessness. What is visible to one may be invisible to another—and vice versa. Overlooking, just as much as seeing, is a capacity of power and an ethical practice. Noticing abuse and other forms of violence is both a cultural and individual act, shaped by social and political forces. Historically, the humanities have striven to bring to light the techniques of power, thus enabling ethical reconsideration and societal self-reflection.
Key questions of the conference on Eastern Europe’s Invisibilities include: How is invisibility produced, overcome, and experienced—and what does it mean for Europe’s East and Eastern European studies? How do Eastern European perspectives help us better understand current political transformations, and how might they offer insights for shaping positionality amid disinformation and increasing authoritarianism? What emancipatory responses do Eastern European studies offer to post- and de-colonial thought and vice versa?
The liberation from the dictatorships in 1989 and the related opening of the archives, in particular the partial opening of the secret service archives, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, have made invisibilities visible within research in a variety of avenues. But what exactly makes the perspectives of the viewers change, how are facts reframed and visions reshaped, and what are the preconditions for these changes? Who have been the producers of invisibilities? What made those invisibilities perceptible for some and invisible for others? What are the active practices of making something or someone invisible?
When are invisibilities products of violence, and when are they strategies of power(lessness) or resistance? What role do the arts and humanities play in the undoing and analysis of invisibility?
The University of Zurich is establishing the Department of Slavic and Eastern European Studies (ISOS) to strengthen interdisciplinary research on Eastern Europe. This new interdisciplinary institute specializes in the analysis of contemporary historical, cultural, social, linguistic, and political developments across Eastern, East-Central, and South-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The international conference “Eastern Europe's Invisibilities: Politics, Epistemics, Arts” will officially celebrate the opening of the ISOS in spring 2026.
Organizers: Prof. Dr. Tomáš Glanc, Prof. Dr. Botakoz Kassymbekova, Dr. Matthias Meindl, Prof. Dr. Jeronim Perović, Prof. Dr. Sylvia Sasse, Dr. Aleksej Tikhonov, Dr. Cristiana Lucchetti
Day 1
May 6, 2026
Aula, KOL-G-201
University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich
Time |
Title |
| 15:00 | Welcome Address Prof. Dr. Katharina Michaelowa (Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities) |
| 15:15 | Introductory Remarks: Sylvia Sasse, Jeronim Perović und Botakoz Kassymbekova |
| 15:30 |
Panel I: Colonial Invisibilities in Eastern Europe (Abstracts (PDF, 89 KB))Foreign domination— whether direct colonial occupation or broader imperial influence— remains one of the most visible forms of power. Yet, the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine caught much of the academic and policy world by surprise. How was the reality of Russian imperialism overlooked for so long? What practices of knowledge have produced this invisibility, and why has colonialism in Eastern Europe remained undertheorized? This panel interrogates the mechanisms that obscured Russian imperial domination and explores what a future decolonization in Eastern Europe should entail for Europe as a whole and beyond. |
| 15:30 | Introduction by chair of panel Botakoz Kassymbekova (UZH) |
| 15:45 | Manuela Boatcă (University of Freiburg): Interconnected Complicity. Europe’s East in Coloniality and Inter-imperiality |
| 16:05 | Mart Kuldkepp (University College London): Phantom Borders, Real Empire: Producing the Invisibility of Russian Imperialism through the Idea of “Eastern Europe” |
| 16:25 | Jasmin Mujanović (Pell Center at Salve Regina University): Against the Dayton Model: Lessons from Bosnia’s Post-War Governance |
| 16:45 | Manuela Boatcă, Mart Kuldkepp, and Jasmin Mujanović in conversation with Botakoz Kassymbekova |
| Keynote & Evening Reception | |
| 18:15 |
Welcome Address |
| 18:30 | Keynote Svetlana Alexievich |
| Apéro riche: Lichthof im Hauptgebäude | |
Day 2
May 7, 2026
KO2-F-152
Karl-Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich
Time |
Title |
|---|---|
| 10:00 |
Panel II Invisible Languages and Speakers (Abstracts (PDF, 75 KB))Language, as the primary means of human communication, exists in countless different shapes and forms, many of which are not usually part of public discourse. This panel intends to shed light on some of the less visible linguistic varieties in the broader context of Eastern Europe. In particular, it concerns the language of ethnic and/or social minorities and the challenges faced by their speakers. |
| 10:00 | Introduction to points of discussion, including their own research perspectives, by the chairs of the panel Cristiana Lucchetti and Aleksej Tikhonov (UZH) |
| 10:10 | Katrin Karl (University of Bern): Invisible Voices? Heritage Languages in Aging and Care Settings (Introduction by Cristiana Lucchetti) |
| 10:35 | Katharina Tyran (University of Helsinki): Challenging layers of invisibility: Language Hierarchies, Public Space, and Researcher Agency in Slavic and Minority Language contexts (Introduction by Aleksej Tikhonov) |
| 11:00 | Katrin Karl and Katharina Tyran in conversation with Cristiana Lucchetti and Aleksej Tikhonov |
| 11:30 | Coffee Break |
| 12:00 |
Panel III: Invisible Academia: Of Pseudo-Science, Extinguished Research and Invisible Universities (Biographical Notes (PDF, 52 KB))Andrea Pető (CEU, Vienna), Balázs Trencsényi (CEU, Vienna & Invisible University) in conversation with Katharina Gerund (UZH) and Julia Richers (University of Bern) |
| 13:15 | Lunch Break |
| 15:00 |
Panel IV: Civil Society, Social Movements, and (Invisible) Resistance (Abstracts (PDF, 59 KB))In many Eastern European states, civil society is under pressure. In Russia, organized civil society has mostly disappeared from political life, yet it occasionally reemerges in supposedly non-partisan issues, such as environmental protests. Serbia, in contrast, has witnessed a wave of citizens’ protests—no longer are young people alone filling the streets of Belgrade and other cities in open defiance of the government, but protesters of all ages and social backgrounds; still, many citizens remain silent or allow themselves to be recruited for mass demonstrations of support for the regime. Georgia, once renowned for its vibrant civic sphere, exemplifies the gradual decline of democracy, where civil society must now reorganize and carve out new spaces of resistance against an increasingly repressive state. Assembling these cases, the panel will show civil society as a contested space that shifts between the public visibility of popular discontent, enforced silence, and new ways to channel rebellion against repressive state power. |
| 15:00 | Introduction by chair Jeronim Perović (UZH) |
| 15:15 | Valentina Petrović (University of Vienna): An Alternative Route to Cleavage Formation? Perceptions of Clientelism and the Emergence of Democratic Opposition in Hybrid Regimes |
| 15:35 | Mariam Bibliashvili (CEES–Fellow; Masaryk University, Brno): Navigating Invisibility: Securitization of Civil Society and Its Resistance in Georgia |
| 15:55 | Jan Matti Dollbaum (University of Fribourg): Is There a Civil Society in Russia, Or, Where is Russia’s Civil Society? |
| 16:15 | Valentina Petrović, Mariam Bibilashvili, and Jan Matti Dollbaum in conversation with Jeronim Perović |
|
|
|
| From 18:30 | Evening Program |
|
Tschornobyl – Archiv der unsichtbaren Katastrophe. Swetlana Alexijewitsch im Gespräch mit Sylvia Sasse & Philine Bickhardt (UZH) Am 26. April 1986 ereignet sich die Reaktor-Katastrophe von Tschornobyl (russ. Tschernobyl): Während Geigerzähler weltweit ausschlagen, schweigt die Sowjet-Presse, mit schwerwiegenden Folgen für die Bevölkerung. Jahre später bereist die Autorin Swetlana Alexijewitsch die Gegend und zeichnet die Erzählungen vieler Betroffener auf, die in das Buch «Tschernobyl. Eine Chronik der Zukunft» einfliessen. Die Ausstellung zeigt erstmals Materialien aus dem umfassenden Video-Archiv zur unsichtbaren Katastrophe. |
|
Day 3
May 8, 2026
KO2-F-152
Karl-Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zürich
Time |
Title |
| 10:00 |
Panel V: Negotiating (In)Visibility (Abstracts (PDF, 316 KB))The panel examines how communities on the short end of hegemonic power relations develop (in)visibility and agency below a threshold of full-volume activism. The panel dedicates itself to LGBTQIA+ minorities in post-Soviet republics, targeted by the so-called anti-Gender campaigns of the populist right, as well as to the activities of artistic underground communities across Eastern Europe and Central Asia that have been marginalized by state and broader systemic censorship, as well as mainstream narratives of art historiography. It discusses attempts of self-assertion that duck the blows of full-contact political confrontation but still introduce new stitch patterns into the fabric of society. It also explores dominant interpretative patterns within and outside the respective communities that reproduce invisibilities—of artistic, political, gender-specific, geographical, and other positions—and thus generate through entrenched narratives “invisibility squared”. |
| 10:00 | Introduction by the chairs Tomáš Glanc & Matthias Meindl |
| 10:15 | Ewa Majewska (SWPS University in Warsaw): The Invisible Queers under the Caring Eyes of the Leviathan (remote) |
| 10:35 | Dorota Sajewska (University of Bochum): Invisibility as a Strategy of Resistance: HIV/AIDS in (Minority) Performance in Poland |
| 10:55 | Ewa Majewska and Dorota Sajewska in conversation with Matthias Meindl |
| 11:30 | Coffee Break |
| 12:00 | Éva Forgács (University of Pasadena): The Role of the West in Eastern Europe’s Invisibility |
| 12:20 | Emese Kürti (Central European Research Institute for Art History, Budapest): Dilemmas of the Semi-Periphery: The Institutionalization of Conceptual Art from Hungary and Yugoslavia under Emerging Illiberalism |
| 12:40 | Éva Forgács and Emese Kürti in conversation with Tomáš Glanc |
| 13:15 | Lunch Break |
| 14:45 |
Panel VI: Secret Services and the Production of Invisibility (Abstracts (PDF, 67 KB))Secret services depend on invisibility. Although they operate in the visible realm, they do so incognito, present, yet invisible to the general public. Research in the former secret service archives of Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe has shown how these “regimes of invisibility” control multiple and multidirectional repression: authoritarian, to suppress their own critical populations; imperial, to enforce Russian interests in the party dictatorships of Eastern Europe; patriarchal, to criminalize feminist or transgender perspectives. In the panel, we will discuss different strategies of invisibilization by secret services in Eastern Europe. |
| 14:45 | Incognito Regimes. Invisibility of Multidirectional Repression ― Introduction by the chairs Roman Horbyk (UZH) and Sylvia Sasse |
| 15:00 | Evgenija Lezina (Leibniz Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam): The Soviet Secret Police as Propagandist: Bringing to Light the Invisible Role of the KGB in Shaping Anti-Ukrainian Discourse in the Post-Stalin Era |
| 15:20 | Andriy Kohut (Director of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine): The Operation ‘Pharysees’ as a Case of Soviet Disinformation against the Holodomor Recognition |
| 15:40 | Evgenija Lezina and Andriy Kohout in conversation with Roman Horbyk |
| 16:15 | Ilija Trojanow: The Archive Is Also a Perpetrator. Literary Engagements with the Archives of Totalitarian Regimes |
Exhibition: Swetlana Alexijewitsch: Tschornobyl – Archiv der unsichtbaren Katastrophe
Am 26. April 1986 ereignet sich die Reaktor-Katastrophe von Tschornobyl (russ. Tschernobyl): Während Geigerzähler weltweit ausschlagen, schweigt die Sowjet-Presse, mit schwerwiegenden Folgen für die Bevölkerung. Jahre später bereist die Autorin Swetlana Alexijewitsch die Gegend und zeichnet die Erzählungen vieler Betroffener auf, die in das Buch "Tschernobyl. Eine Chronik der Zukunft" einfliessen. Die Ausstellung zeigt erstmals Materialien aus dem umfassenden Video-Archiv zur unsichtbaren Katastrophe.
Die spätere Literatur-Nobelpreisträgerin Swetlana Alexijewitsch bereist in den 1990er-Jahren gemeinsam mit der Journalistin Tatsiana Loginova belarusische Gebiete, die nach dem Reaktor-Unfall radioaktiv kontaminiert sind. Sie interviewt Zeug:innen der Katastrophe, die wieder in ihren Häusern leben, oder von Anfang an der Evakuierung trotzten, einfach dageblieben sind – und hört zu. 40 Jahre nach der Reaktor-Katastrophe zeigt die Ausstellung erstmals Ausschnitte aus dem umfangreichen Video-Archiv – zeigt Gesten und Blicke, macht Stimmen hörbar und den Entstehungsprozess des Buches, die literarische Montage und Verarbeitung des Ausgangsmaterials zum Tschernobyl-Buch nachvollziehbar.
In ihren Berichten erzählen die Betroffenen immer wieder, dass für sie damals keine Bedrohung zu sehen war. So erzählt Frau Kovalenko, dass der «Flieder blühte», der «Faulbeerbaum duftete», die «Frösche» quakten und die "Würmer" krochen. Aber für die frisch verheiratete Ukrainerin Ljudmila Ignatenko wird das Trauma von Tschornobyl sofort real: Sie begleitet 14 Tage lang ihren Mann in der Moskauer Klinik für Strahlenkrankheiten in den Tod, er war als einer der ersten Feuerwehrleute vor Ort, um den Brand im Kraftwerk zu löschen.
Lecture Series - Eastern Europe’s Invisibilities
Time: Tuesdays, 4–6 pm
Location: PLG 211, Plattenstrasse 43
Program: Lecture Series Eastern Europe's Invisibilities (PDF, 9 MB)
24 February, 16:00
Alexandra Chiriac (GWZO Leibniz, Leipzig)
‘Invisible Things Are Not Necessarily Not-there’: Searching for Experiences of Blackness in Romania
10 March, 16:00
Mykhaylo Yakubovych (Universität Freiburg)
Reclaiming the Margins: Why Crimean Tatar Studies Matter in Eastern European Intellectual History
24 March, 16:00
Željana Tunić (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)Konkurrierende Politiken der Solidarität. Zur Aneignung Patrice Lumumbas als antikoloniale Ikone in der Sowjetunion und Jugoslawien
14 April, 16:00
Ulyana Veryna (University of Oldenburg)
Architecture of Invisibility: Polish-language Soviet Literature as an Empty Reservation
28 April, 16:00
Katarzyna Kubin (University of Warsaw)
Shame and Invisibility in Coloniality: Reading Black Writing from Poland for Visions of Solidarities at the Intersections of the “posts-”
19 May, 16:00
Alexandra Portmann (Universität Bern) & Duška Radosavljević (University of Lund/University of London)
Between Invisibility and Hypervisibility: Yugoslav Theatre Workers in Western European Cultural Contexts
26 May, 16:00
Valeria Prorizna (Center for Spatial Technologies)
Church, Chora, Chersonese: A Lens on Cultural Heritage under Occupation