The Region, Nation, and Beyond project, which lasted from 2012 till 2015, involved collaboration of dozens of scholars based in Ukraine, Poland, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Canada and the US specialized in a variety of social sciences and humanities disciplines such as religion, political science, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, literature and history. The overarching objective of the project was to challenge the dominance of the nation-state paradigm in analyses of Ukraine and stereotypical representation of “East-West” regional divide by exploring the complexity of legacies, belongings and attitudes. The project consisted of six working groups focused on:
The result is a unique interdisciplinary analysis of regional dynamics in Ukraine positioned within broader patterns of global development. Qualitative and quantitative database collected in frames of the project includes:
Project field work collection was managed by the Center for Urban History in Lviv (coordinator - dr. Viktoria Sereda). Project-collaborators came up with significant findings for the conceptualization of Ukrainian regionalism beyond administrative territories. One line of interpretation is the presence of “regionalism without regions”: There are distinct regional differences in the set of values and identifications throughout Ukraine, but with notable exceptions, for example Galicia, it is difficult to speak about clear cut homogeneous regions. However, as the very recent history illustrates, it is possible to tamper with certain predispositions in Ukrainian regions in order to destabilize the Ukrainian state. The results of all subprojects were synthesized into an interdisciplinary analysis and will be published in 2017 in a collective volume Regionalism without Regions: Reconceptualizing Ukraine’s Heterogeneity. The project was financially supported by Swiss National Science Foundation and Wolodymyr George Danyliw Foundation.