Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case
The talk introduces a new notion of 'ambicoloniality,' first used in the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) by Dr Svitlana Biedarieva. The concept of ambicoloniality is employed to analyse the current situation, in which Ukraine has become Russia's territory of obsession, and Russia, in its desire to occupy Ukraine, has, in effect, subjected itself to Ukraine's symbolic dominance. The book argues that the Ukrainian-Russian case is different from the examples covered by both postcolonial and decolonial theorists, with ambicoloniality presenting a key point of divergence from already existing models. To explore the reasons and consequences of such a differing process of colonial expansion, anti-colonial struggle, and decolonial release, the presentation also examines the role that cultural hybridity plays in political self-identification in both Ukraine and Russia, and how this hybridity has manifested in society and culture (including examples of art and literature) following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The talk will be followed by a Q&A with one of the founders of the Oxford Ukraine Hub, Dr Panayiotis Xenophontos, before opening questions to the audience.
Dr Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian and curator, with a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She is the author of the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and the editor of Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024) and Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991-2021 (ibidem Press, 2021), among others. Dr Biedarieva is the General Editor of The Harvard History of Ukrainian Art book series (forthcoming). She serves as President-Elect of the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) and is the Founder of Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network.