Seminar “Urban Studies in Ukraine: The Urban Space and Symbolic Images of Zaporizhia”

Program of the seminar

The seminar consisted of three parts. In the first part (November 28), the participants dealt with technical issues related to the realization of the project. In particular, the organizers of the project spoke on work with the database “The Symbolic Space of Ukraine’s Cities,” the creation of multimedia maps, use of questionnaires and conduct of interviews within the framework of the project, and other questions.

The second part of the seminar (November 29) was devoted to the materials collected in the course of the project. In particular, the participants familiarized themselves with the collections of the Zaporizhia branch of the M. S. Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archaeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Zaporizhia Regional Museum of Local History.

The third part of the seminar (November 30) was devoted to the discussion of current issues in such areas of urban studies as symbolic space, cultural heritage and historical memory, regional cultural policies, the formation of urban identities, and socio-cultural aspects of post-communist transformation in Ukraine, with a focus on Zaporizhia as a case study.

The thematic areas of the seminar included:

• The symbolic milieu and commemorative and ritual practices in Zaporizhia in their historical development.
• The evolution of Zaporizhia’s cultural landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; consequences of the socio-cultural and socio-political transformations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
• Variants of local identities, conflict zones and channels of dialogue (the case of Zaporizhia).
• Visual images of the city: sources and methods of study.

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