Researchers from more than 30 countries across the world will gather in Tartu to discuss the past, present, and future of Eastern Europe and Eurasia

The Seventh Annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies on 11–13 June 2023 will bring more than 200 researchers from 33 countries to Tartu to discuss the fundamental cultural, social, economic, and political trends affecting all aspects of life in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The international conference in the field of social sciences and humanities, organised for the seventh time by the Centre for Eurasian and Russian Studies (CEURUS) of the University of Tartu, is this year held under the theme of War and Peace: What's Next for Eastern Europe and Eurasia?

The Programme Committee has defined war and peace as the main focus of this year’s conference: “From today’s perspective, we no longer have peace, but it remains a goal for the future. For most, achieving this goal means winning the war. Yet it is equally clear that Putin’s military defeat will not in itself bring a stable peace. Thinking about how future peace could be established, the legal and institutional provisions that need to be in place, and the ways that the story of this war should be incorporated into our historical narratives is the responsibility of intellectuals.”

• The conference will open on 11 June with a keynote address by Professor Andriy Zayarnyuk, a distinguished Ukrainian historian from the University of Winnipeg, Canada, who will reflect on Ukrainian history in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
• On the following day, the conference’s programme features a plenary roundtable on the topic of Putin’s War: What Future for Russia, where the speakers will discuss the transformations that Russia (or the territory currently occupied by the Russian state) will inevitably go through as a result of the war.

The full conference programme is available on the conference website.

The conference is supported by the UT Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, UT Faculty of Social Sciences, Tartu City Government, and the US Embassy in Tallinn.

Further information: Maili Vilson, Deputy Head for Academic Affairs of Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, Executive Director of CEURUS, and co-organiser of the conference, +372 737 6375, maili.vilson@ut.ee