Part of Ukraine's ongoing struggle for independence from Russia is the establishment of a Ukrainian Orthodox church independent from the Moscow Patriarchate. Already before the full-scale Russian invasion of 24 February 2022, this resulted in a fragmented church landscape, which in the wake of the invasion has become ever more politicized. In this episode, historian Yuliya Yurchuk (Södertörn University) will discuss the origins and implications of this complex situation, as well as the role that the different Ukrainian churches have played in the process of nation-building.

Yuliya Yurchuk is a Senior Lecturer of History at Södertörn University, Sweden. She specializes in memory studies, history of religion, history of knowledge, and the study of nationalism in East European countries. She is the author of the book Reordering of Meaningful Worlds: Memory of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Post-Soviet Ukraine (Acta 2014) and one of the editors of “Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective” (Routledge, 2022, co-edited with Zuzanna Bogumil).  Her articles have appeared in Memory Studies, Nationalities Papers, Europe-Asia Studies, Nordisk Østforum, Baltic Worlds, Ukraina Moderna, etc. In 2022 Yurchuk was granted funding by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies for her research project "From Sweden with Love: Circulation and interpretation of Ellen Key’s ideas about sexuality, love, motherhood, and education in the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union (1890-1930s)". She will be working on the project from 2023 to 2026.