KARTA: Ukrainian Decolonial Thought
A Ukrainian-German initiative exploring identity, memory, resistance, and cultural sovereignty through contemporary Ukrainian decolonial perspectives.
About the Project
KARTA is a Ukrainian-German cultural and educational initiative dedicated to presenting key ideas, texts, and cultural perspectives of Ukrainian decolonial thought to broader international audiences. The project explores how Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, filmmakers, historians, and cultural actors have reflected on questions of empire, identity, language, memory, resistance, and cultural sovereignty across different historical periods and into the present day.
The project emerged from the growing need to make Ukrainian intellectual traditions more visible within European discourse and to challenge long-standing imperial and Soviet-centered narratives that have marginalized Ukrainian perspectives for decades. Through an accessible and interdisciplinary format, KARTA creates new spaces for dialogue on decolonization, democracy, cultural memory, and the future of Europe.
The project brings together cultural practitioners, researchers, translators, librarians, and civil society actors from Ukraine and Germany in order to strengthen long-term transnational cooperation and public engagement around Ukrainian culture and decolonial knowledge production.
At the heart of the project is the publication KARTA: Ukrainian Decolonial Thought. An Annotated Digest, which combines contextual essays, annotations, historical materials, visual references, and cultural analysis. The publication highlights the role of literature, media, cinema, and cultural production as important spaces where collective identity and processes of decolonization are negotiated and transformed.
The publication is released as an open-access resource and is available in both German and Ukrainian in order to ensure broad accessibility for academic audiences, cultural practitioners, educators, libraries, and the wider public in Ukraine, Germany, and beyond.
The digital edition is freely accessible as a PDF for all interested readers. In addition, printed copies are available for libraries, educational and cultural institutions, research centers, and non-commercial organizations.
Institutions interested in receiving a printed copy are welcome to contact us. We will provide the publication free of charge. Only delivery costs must be covered by the receiving institution.
Cooperation and Partnerships
KARTA is implemented by Dialogkraft Europa e.V. in cooperation with the Regional Department of Vinnytsia of the Ukrainian Library Association and the Valentyn Otamanovskyi Vinnytsia Regional Universal Scientific Library.
The project is developed within a broader network of Ukrainian-German cultural and academic cooperation and benefits from interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, translators, librarians, educators, and cultural organizers.
Important project partners include:
- Ukrainian Institute in Germany
- Insha Osvita
- The Regional Department of Vinnytsia of the Ukrainian Library Association
- Valentyn Otamanovskyi Vinnytsia Regional Universal Scientific Library
- goEast Film Festival of Central and Eastern European Film
Funding and Support
The project is part of the RHIZOM/RAZOM programme of the Ukrainian Institute in Germany. The programme is financed by the German Federal Foreign Office and implemented in cooperation with Insha Osvita.
Events
Digest Presentation at the goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film (24 April 2026)
Thank you to goEast Film Festival of Central and Eastern European Film for creating a space to discuss the importance of decolonial practices in contemporary Ukrainian culture.
One thing that became especially clear during our discussion is that the process of decolonisation is widely shared across Ukrainian society, even if people do not always use this exact terminology. The need to rethink and reinterpret Ukraine’s past and to imagine and articulate its future in new ways is deeply felt throughout society today.
And cinema is not only a medium of representation. It is also a space where meanings are created, negotiated, and transformed. Film shapes how we understand history, identity, memory, and belonging. It can reinforce dominant narratives, but it can also question and challenge them.
Many contemporary Ukrainian films engage directly with these questions. They revisit historical narratives, rethink collective memory, and open new perspectives on identity, experience, and cultural agency.
With our open access publication KARTA: Ukrainian Decolonial Thought. An Annotated Digest”, we also hope to make these perspectives more accessible to German speaking audiences and to contribute to a broader dialogue about Ukrainian culture, memory, and decolonial thought.
We are very grateful for this thoughtful exchange and for the opportunity to take part in such an important conversation.
Decolonizing History: Pavlo Skoropadskyi and Ukraine’s European Future
KARTA will be presented on 16 May 2026 during the conference “The Ukrainian from Wiesbaden: Pavlo Skoropadskyi and the History of the Ukrainian Diaspora in Germany and Europe”, organized by Dialogkraft Europa e.V. in cooperation with Dunstan gemeinnützige UG.
The conference focuses on Pavlo Skoropadskyi as one of the key figures of Ukrainian political and intellectual history and explores broader questions of Ukrainian statehood, migration, exile, and diaspora in the European context. Particular attention is given to the historical connection between Skoropadskyi and the city of Wiesbaden, where he was born, highlighting the city as a point of intersection between Ukrainian, German, and European history.
The KARTA presentation will focus on decolonial approaches to Ukrainian history and examine how historical narratives continue to shape contemporary understandings of identity, sovereignty, cultural memory, and self-determination.
Online Book Presentation
The online event will open with a keynote by Valentina Sotnikova, founder of the YouTube podcast Dekolonizatoriki (“Decolonizers”), focusing on current decolonial developments in Ukraine and their significance for European cultural and political discourse.
The presentation is designed as an open platform for exchange between scholars, cultural practitioners, librarians, translators, civil society actors, and interested audiences. It aims to encourage new conversations about cultural memory, knowledge production, decolonization, and democratic transformation in times of war and social change.
The publication is released as an open-access edition in both German and Ukrainian in order to make these perspectives accessible to a broad international audience.
Partners
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