Seminar series “Rethinking Ukraine’s Environment: War, Ecocide, and Beyond”
From CIUS and partners—a new international seminar series on the environmental history of Ukraine.
Russia’s ongoing military aggression against Ukraine has brought unprecedented attention to the environmental consequences of armed conflict. While discussions on ecocide and the destruction of ecosystems have gained traction in media and academic circles, historical perspectives on human–environment interactions in Ukraine remain underexplored. Understanding these historical relationships is vital for comprehending the deeper roots of current environmental challenges and envisioning sustainable futures.
The “Rethinking Ukrainian Environment: War, Ecocide, and Beyond” series aims to address this gap by fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue on the past, present, and future of Ukraine’s environment. This initiative will bring together scholars from various disciplines—including environmental history, environmental humanities, ecology, biology, geography, anthropology, political science, cultural studies, linguistics, folklore, geography, economics, and hydrology—in order to explore the epistemological, theoretical, empirical, and practical dimensions of research on Ukraine’s environment. Rather than focusing solely on war and destruction, the series will emphasize broader historical and contemporary human–environment interactions across different ecosystems and geopolitical contexts.
In addition to research-focused presentations on a range of topics, the seminars will include methodological discussions aimed at helping scholars to refine their approaches to studying Ukraine’s environmental history and current conditions.
By bridging the past and present, integrating diverse academic disciplines—including the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—and bringing together researchers worldwide while highlighting various ecosystems and human–environment interactions, the seminar series is expected to foster rich discussions and knowledge exchange. In turn, this will encourage new research and innovative perspectives on identifying solutions to Ukraine’s environmental challenges.
Upcoming Seminars
The Holodomor and the Environment
25 May 2026
This seminar explores the environmental dimensions of the Holodomor, focusing on how famine reshaped landscapes and human–environment relations. By integrating environmental history with social and cultural approaches, the seminar reframes the Holodomor as not only a human tragedy, but also a catastrophe for non-humans, with enduring consequences.
Past Seminars
Multiethnic Encounters With and Indigenous Knowledge On the Environment in Ukraine
26 March 2026
This seminar explores human-environment relations within diverse communities in Ukraine and examines how Indigenous and local environmental knowledge shapes those relations. Bringing together case studies from different regions and historical contexts, it highlights how multiethnic communities have developed place-based knowledge through long-term interaction with landscapes and ecosystems.
Animals In and Beyond Wartime
12 February, 2026
Bringing together scholars from different disciplines as well as practitioners, this presentation in the seminar series explores how war disrupts non-human lives and reconfigures human-animal relations, both during and beyond wartime.
Waste, Epidemics, and Human Health in Environmental Studies
4 December, 2025
This seminar exploreS how societies have understood and managed threats to health and the environment across different historical contexts. From the early Soviet policies that turned waste into a strategic economic resource, to the late socialist era’s “waste anxieties” over invisible toxins like radiation and nitrates, and ultimately to nineteenth-century literary and cultural responses to epidemics, the seminar presentations will trace shifting perceptions in Ukraine of pollution, contagion, and cleanliness. Together, they will reveal how waste and disease have shaped not only material practices but also moral, political, and cultural visions of human health and social order.
The War-driven Environmental Destruction in Ukraine: Naming, Understanding, Witnessing
9 October, 2025
This seminar session examineS the environmental devastation caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine from different perspectives. The speakers discuss the scale and nature of ecological destruction, explore the cultural and narrative frameworks that shape our understanding of it, and reflect on the relationship between ecocide and autoecocide.
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Hosted by CIUS, this international seminar series is a joint initiative of the EnvHistUA Research Group and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (University of Alberta), with further support from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (Södertörn University), Center for Governance and Culture in Europe (University of St. Gallen), and the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH).
Image credits:
Inset: “Dnipro Rapids 1920”; public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Background: “Rapids in the 18th c.”; public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.