Special forum “Looking Back, Moving Forward: Interdisciplinary Decolonial Dialogues on Central Asia and Eastern Europe”
RUTA will host the online launch of the special forum Looking Back, Moving Forward: Interdisciplinary Decolonial Dialogues on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, published open access in Central Asian Affairs (Vol. 13, No. 3, 2026).
Date: Wednesday, 28 October 2026
Time: 11:00–12:30 CET
Format: Online
The launch brings together the forum’s editors and contributors with invited discussants Madina Tlostanova, Professor of postcolonial feminism at Linköping University and Yuliya Yurchuk, Associate Professor in history of ideas at Södertörn University. The event will be moderated by Assel Tutumlu, Associate Professor in International Relations at Near East University
Editors: Nodira Kholmatova, Olga Burlyuk, Gulnaz Sibgatullina
Contributors: Diana Kudaibergen, Selbi Durdiyeva, Tereza Hendl, Assel Tutumlu Nodira Abdulloeva, Kostia Gorobets, Dilya Mamadshoeva, Sudha Rajagopalan, Mila Rossokhatskaya.
About the special forum
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russia-centric lens that long dominated research on the region has become increasingly untenable. This special forum asks how, and by whom, knowledge about Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Northern Eurasia is produced. It treats Soviet and Russian imperialism as part of the modern colonial order, and it confronts the global hierarchies of knowledge that continue to marginalise voices from the region.
The forum grew out of a workshop held at the University of Amsterdam in October 2024. Its aim was to build a transregional dialogue across disciplines, professions and positionalities. The workshop brought together scholars, legal practitioners and activists from Central Asia, Eastern Europe, South Asia and beyond. What began as a conversation grew organically into a collective of specialists who each have important things to share. Their insights speak not only to academia but also to policymakers, journalists, civil society and anyone engaged with the region.
The forum is published as three edited dialogues rather than conventional articles, so that it stays accessible to this wider readership:
- Decolonial Thought and the Soviet Legacy
- Reckoning with Positionality and Implications of Soviet Colonialism
- Cultural Decolonization and Sustaining Decolonial Approaches
In the editorial afterword, What the Dialogues Revealed Together, the editors read across the three sessions. They show the unresolved problems that surfaced in all three dialogues and map out trajectories for future collective initiatives, research and action.
About the launch
The launch will bring the forum’s collective together again to celebrate the publication and discuss its key contributions with other critical scholars in the field. Just as importantly, it opens the conversation to a wider audience. Together with the audience we want to discuss the forum’s main takeaways and the initiatives needed to carry this transregional decolonial dialogue forward.
Registration
Please register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FlJNl0t5TjO82GyrAq02Ew
Read the special forum (open access): https://brill.com/view/journals/caa/13/3/caa.13.issue-3.xml
Contact: Grazina Bielousova (gbielousova@gmail.com) and Nodira Kholmatova (n.kholmatova@uva.nl)
Bios
Invited Guests/Discussants
Madina Tlostanova is Professor of Postcolonial Feminism at Linköping University, Sweden. She is a decolonial thinker and writer whose work has been foundational for decolonial scholarship on the former colonial spaces of the Russian and Soviet empires. Her work focuses on decolonising gender and knowledge production, including universities and museums, as well as on political art and feminisms of the Global South. Her books include Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands (2010) and What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (2018). Her most recent book is Not by Leviathan Alone: An Exercise in Post-Nation-State Worlding (2026). Her recent articles include “Reimagining decolonial premises in the midst of genocidal neo-imperial aggression: is Ukraine a case of/for decoloniality?” (International Politics, 2026).
Yuliya Yurchuk is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the History of Ideas at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research covers memory, nationalism, religion and the history of knowledge, with a focus on Ukraine and Eastern and Central Europe. She is the author of Reordering of Meaningful Worlds: Memory of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Post-Soviet Ukraine (2014) and co-editor of Memory and Religion from a Post-Secular Perspective (2022). She has also written on Ukrainian memory politics from a postcolonial perspective.
Moderator
Assel Tutumlu is a Faculty Member at Near East University, specializing in Central Asian (particularly Kazakh) resistance and grassroots movements. is an accomplished academicprofessional with a strong background in International Relations, specializing in Global Affairs. Her research explores the nature of authoritarian regimes in Central Asia and beyond, particularly looking into discursive and disciplinary practices. She served as a Board Member of RUTA (2025), and contributed to the special forum Looking Back, Moving Forward: Interdisciplinary Decolonial Dialogues on Central Asia and Eastern Europe as one of the authors.