Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom

A book talk and discussion with Greta Lynn Uehling, cultural anthropologist and professor at the University of Michigan

Moderated by Emily Channell-Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at HURI and Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed, Preceptor in Ukrainian and head of the Ukrainian Language Program in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard

Decolonizing Ukrainian Studies is an online event series featuring publications that engage with decolonial frameworks in Ukrainian studies. The series is organized by the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at HURI and hosted by Emily Channell-Justice and Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed.

About the Book

Decolonizing Ukraine offers an ethnographic account of the Russian occupation of Crimea since 2014 and the mass displacement it set in motion. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Ukraine, the book centers Indigenous Crimean Tatar and Slavic communities who resisted Russian rule, treating occupation not only as a geopolitical event but as a lived condition that restructures social relations, political subjectivities, and historical consciousness. Through narratives of flight, loss, and political awakening, the book traces the emergence of a fragile yet consequential social cohesion that cuts across ethnic differences. These accounts illuminate the affective dimensions of displacement, offering a phenomenological perspective on trauma, precarity, and endurance.

Each chapter examines a distinct site of decolonization from music that mourns irreparable loss, to activism oriented toward territorial reclamation, and efforts to reframe Crimea’s past. Taken together, the ethnographic encounters demonstrate decolonization is an ongoing process rooted in cultural production, political struggle, and Indigenous political imaginaries that actively resist settler colonial logics of elimination and dispossession.
 

About the Speaker

Greta Lynn Uehling is a cultural anthropologist who studies war, conflict, and population displacement, with a focus on the everyday lives of civilians. A professor at the University of Michigan, she currently teaches seminars for the Program in International and Comparative Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her latest book, Decolonizing Ukraine (2025), makes the case that Crimea is central to understanding Ukraine and its war with Russia. Her previous book, Everyday War (Cornell University Press, 2023), rethinks civilian participation in contemporary conflict and received Harvard University’s Davis Center Book Prize. She is also the author of Beyond Memory: The Crimean Tatars’ Deportation and Return. [image source]

This event is organized by the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program (TCUP) at HURI as part of the Decolonizing Ukrainian Studies online event series.

Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access should contact HURI (huri@fas.harvard.edu) at least two weeks in advance of the session.

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