Fall 2026 Courses

The course explores central debates in Soviet historiography through the experiences of diverse non-Russian regions and social groups across the USSR. Drawing on political, social, and cultural histories developed over recent decades, it examines how common all-Union processes - revolution, industrialization, collectivization, destalinization, stagnation, and the collapse of the Soviet state - unfolded differently depending on where and by whom they were lived.

At the same time, this course seeks to understand the extent to which these seemingly overpowering state-led processes transformed local societies in favour of Soviet universalism. The goal is to navigate between the Scylla of a unified imperial narrative and the Charybdis of separate and self-sufficient national stories through presenting a comparative framework that holds both in view. Within this framework, students will learn to situate specific cases within broader Soviet history, and to critically interrogate the general narratives that have long dominated the field.

Academic research has long shown that nations and borders are not timeless facts but historical and social constructions. But in a context where violent border revision is being normalized, such arguments can be stripped of their meaning and reused against the very societies whose survival depends on the protection of those institutions.

The question, of course, is not whether critique is necessary, but how to sustain a critical analysis of modern political categories (nation, sovereignty, territory, borders, etc.) without allowing that critique to serve anti-modernist and imperialist political projects. The broader issue, then, is how scholars could contribute to preserving normative and political conditions that make their critical thinking possible instead of undermining them. Ukraine serves as the central case through which to analyze broader processes of territorial imagination and boundary-making in Eastern Europe and beyond.

During our seminar we will particularly raise such questions as:

• how borders and spatial imaginaries have been produced, contested, and naturalized in Ukraine and wider (post)imperial contexts;
• the limitations of interpreting borders and spaces solely as social constructs and the agency of the individuals who inhabit these areas;
• the metaphor of Ukraine as a borderland or a frontier and how it can be reinterpreted during wartime.

Contemporary social relations increasingly transcend national borders as people migrate in response to war, repression, climate change, economic opportunities, or intimate partnerships. This seminar examines how people sustain social, familial, and intimate relationships across national borders, focusing on the role of digital technologies, infrastructures, routines, and affective labor that maintain or disrupt long distance connections.

Using socio anthropological perspectives on transnationalism and care, students explore how kinship and support systems adapt when lived across distance. Through readings, discussions, guest lectures, and collaborative Swiss-Ukrainian research projects, the course offers both theoretical foundations and hands-on experience studying transnational relations. The seminar is offered in collaboration between the Invisible University and the University of Fribourg and takes place primarily online.

Learning objectives

• Students understand the key debates in the field of transnational relations and care in order to apply them in the anthropological analysis of contemporary societies.
• Students develop the ability to analyze and discuss complex societal questions.
• Students are able to plan, conduct and finalize small research projects in groups.
• Students interact with one another transnationally through online teaching and research settings and reflect on the benefits and challenges this brings.

This course explores justice as both a fundamental value of democratic societies and a guiding principle of judicial systems across Europe. It examines how independent courts protect the rule of law, uphold human rights, and respond to periods of political, social, and constitutional transformation.

Drawing on comparative European perspectives, the course addresses judicial independence, European standards of justice, judicial reform, and contemporary challenges to the judiciary, including democratic backsliding, political interference, and the erosion of the rule of law. Particular attention is given to developments in Ukraine, Poland, and other European countries.

The course also examines justice in times of war and societal transition, exploring transitional justice, accountability for international crimes, the role of courts during wartime, and post-war reconstruction. Ukraine serves as a central case study, illustrating the challenges of administering justice while pursuing judicial reform and European integration.

A particular focus is placed on public trust in the judiciary as a cornerstone of legitimate and effective justice. By connecting normative concepts of justice with contemporary legal developments, the course offers a comparative perspective on the evolving role of courts in addressing the challenges facing Europe today.

The mass anti-authoritarian protests of 2020 and the outbreak of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine - with the support of Lukashenka's regime - have led to radical changes in Belarusian society. The country is facing multiple crises that necessitate a fundamental interdisciplinary rethinking of key aspects of social and political life in Belarus as well as prospects for the nation's existence and its (re)positioning in regional and global contexts.

This course is designed to provide a thought-provoking introduction to the current situation in Belarus, which is understood and interpreted differently by various actors. The reasons for the resilience of the authoritarian regime, international politics and relations with Ukraine, the issue of national identity in the context of war and mass emigration, the opposition's agency, and the prospects for Belarus's democratisation - these and other pressing issues require a comprehensive approach and the search for relevant analytical tools.

Contemporary Belarus is a challenging subject both in terms of its internal and external sociopolitical prospects and in terms of its epistemic framing. The objective of the course is to provide students with a foundational understanding of the intricate contemporary reality of the Belarusian nation and to equip them with the conceptual tools necessary to study Belarus in a manner that transcends the traditional imperial frameworks of knowledge production about the region.

The end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany marked a period of relative peace and stability for much of the European continent - but not for its southeastern region. There, Yugoslavia and its successor states experienced a series of bloody conflicts that resulted in an estimated 140,000 dead and missing, millions of refugees and displaced persons, numerous war crimes, and the redrawing of Europe's political map. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the continent, the Soviet Union disintegrated largely peacefully, although its collapse was also accompanied by several localized conflicts.

The goal of this course is to analyze the impact of the Yugoslav Wars - also referred to as the Wars in the Former Yugoslavia, the Wars for the Yugoslav Succession, or the Third Balkan War. The diversity of these terms reflects the fact that historians have not reached a consensus on a single name for the conflicts. The course will examine how these wars have shaped the contemporary states and entities born out of the wartime de facto states of the Western Balkans, as well as the societies that emerged following the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. It will also, to some extent, explore the broader political, social, and cultural consequences of these conflicts for other parts of Europe that were not directly affected by the fighting.

The southeastern peninsula of the European continent, more commonly known by the loaded term "the Balkans," is a region of astonishing ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, where some of history's greatest empires and political blocs have bordered each other. From its origins as imperial borderlands to the formation of nation-states in the 19th century, the turbulent history of the Balkans has always attracted significant attention. Its status as a European "powder keg" was seemingly confirmed both by the two Balkan Wars and the Sarajevo assassination at the beginning of the 20th century, and by the atrocious decade of the Yugoslav Wars at its end.

Exoticized and dreaded, the Balkans still remain poorly understood. While the Invisible University for Ukraine has previously dealt extensively with aspects of Balkan history, culture, and contemporary issues relevant to Ukraine (such as war, transitional justice, and European integration), past participants expressed a clear wish for an introductory course of Balkan Studies. This course attempts to fill that gap. It will provide a foundational introduction to Balkan political and cultural history, while also creating a space for dialogue about the region's specificities and comparisons with other parts of Europe.

The course examines how political order is produced not only through laws, bureaucracies and official organizations, but also through personal ties, unwritten rules, tacit knowledge and informal networks. Such arrangements can compensate for ineffective institutions, facilitate cooperation and provide access to resources. They can also distribute privileges, enforce loyalty, conceal responsibility and concentrate power. Informality is therefore neither inherently beneficial nor inherently destructive: its effects depend on the relationships it organizes and the formal institutions with which it interacts.

The expression "Informal Leviathan" describes the capacity of networks and practices to generate durable forms of coordination and control. The course asks how trust, friendship, patronage, corruption and coercion become organizing principles of political life. It also considers the other side of informal association: its ability to sustain solidarity, civic mobilization and resistance outside officially supervised channels. Literature and cinema are examined as fields in which informal authority can be made visible, criticized or legitimized.

The course moves from general theories of institutions and informality to the Soviet and post-Soviet experience, with particular attention to Georgia. It considers the transformation of personal networks after the Soviet collapse, trust and distrust, civil and uncivil society, corruption, criminal authority, institutional reform, and the persistence of informal power within formally modern institutions. The final session brings these perspectives together by examining the changing configuration of informality across Georgia's post-independence regimes.

Georgia and Ukraine, both positioned on the edges of Europe while at the same time neighboring Russia, have long shared a paradoxical geopolitical fate - aspiring toward Europe, yet remaining haunted by the imperial ambitions and periodical invasions of Russia. Both nations serve as laboratories of identity-making, memory politics, and symbolic geopolitics, where religion, culture, and ideology intersect with geopolitical struggles.

The course invites students to study Georgia and Ukraine as microcosms of post-imperial transformation, analyzing their history and present within a broader theoretical framework and regional context that include the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. Students will explore how religion, civilizational discourse, and legacies of imperial rule shape modern statehood, social mobilization, and cultural self-understanding.

Georgia's contested nationalism, its European aspirations, and its painful yet ambivalent relationship with Russia will be analyzed alongside Ukrainian struggles with decolonization and pluralism. Using this comparative lens, the course examines how identity is negotiated through geopolitics; not only in military or strategic terms, but also through symbols, myths, rituals, and cultural narratives that define what it means to be "European," "sovereign," or "traditional" in the 21st century.