This dissertation aims to study how the past can be used to achieve decolonization. It is divided into three work packages covering three distinct arenas of “memory entrepreneurship” — public discourse, international relations, and cultural policy. This choice examines three layers where public and semi-public actors use memory and various references to the past to promote the desired decolonization.

• Work Package 1, titled “Public Opinion,” is focused on investigating discursive practices in which different memory entrepreneurs engage. This package`s main objective is to trace the complexity of memory politics, which goes beyond the conventional understanding of the politics of memory as a state historical policy and covers various groups such as media, clerics, public intellectuals, service(wo)men, and bloggers.

• Work Package 2, titled "International Policy," focuses on the strategies of high-level governors to lobby for a specific international understanding and record of historical events within various international governmental organizations. This block examines state representatives' policies and approaches to shape and influence the discourse surrounding past and decolonization on the global stage. Particular emphasis is placed on the Great Famine of the 1930s, which holds significant importance in the Ukrainian international agenda as a core event for recognizing the Famine and the ongoing war as genocides.

• Work Package 3, titled "Cultural Policy," focuses on examining the interplay between the politics of memory and its implementation through culture and art, explicitly emphasizing the role of museums in constructing, highlighting, and shadowing narratives of the past.

Based on these three work packages, this dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary theoretical framework comprising studies on (1) discursive practices and discourse analysis, (2) collective memory as a component of national security of identity, and (3) museology including studies on memorial museums and museums of memory as objects, but also mediators of the cultural policy. These theoretical strands are united under an umbrella of decolonization as an aim of all three political strategies of memory entrepreneurs in different arenas.

Photo: KTF4Ukraine

In 2022, I joined the FWF Project "Migration as Morality Politics" (www.migration-morality.com) , lead by Univ-Prof. Dr. Julia Mourao Permoser at the University of Innsbruck. Initially, my participation in the project focused on a detailed study of the Sanctuary Movement, particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium, where I had previous experience from my master's studies. However, as we delved deeper into our research, we realized the potential for a more extensive project during my one-year involvement. We came up with the idea to create a concise database about the Sanctuary Movement in Europe. My primary tasks included:

• Managing the project website.

• Gathering data on sanctuary campaigns from sources like "Factiva" and Google.

• Using MaxQDA software to categorize and code the collected information.

• Incorporating this data into the database and conducting analyses based on established criteria.

• Creating visual representations of the cases on a coordinate system.

• Writing technical descriptions of the methods used for the benefit of future researchers.

• Small managing tasks like organizing and preparing Zoom meetings, writing memos, preparing technical carts for our web designers, etc.

Our collaboration will culminate in presenting the findings of this specific project branch at the panel we are hosting during the ECPR General Conference in Prague in September 2023. Furthermore, we plan to publish a collaborative paper, which will be refined following our participation in the conference.

Photo: Unsplash

This doctoral research was based on the case study of the postcolonial foreign policy of the Kingdom of Belgium towards the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi. This two-years paused research included:

1. OeAD Fellowship (University of Vienna, Department of Political Science), 2022

2. Erasmus+ Exchange semester (University of Vienna, Department of Political Science), 2022

3. Field Study in Brussels, Belgium (visiting the The Royal Museum for Central Africa for qualitative interviews), Feb 2022

Photo: Oleksandra Terentyeva