The Architecture of Hope: Forging Ukraine`s Agency Through Wartime

The 2025 IDH Forum explores hope as both a personal and societal phenomenon. It focuses on ethics, politics, and theology of hope. Amidst war and ongoing Russian aggression, hope serves as a crucial bulwark against the aggressor's dehumanizing tactics and genocidal practices. Hope empowers Ukrainians to envision victory and shape a vision for a post-war future.

 

The Forum aims to create a platform for exploring how hope functions as both an emotional-moral foundation for individuals and a driving force in social and cultural processes, including the development of ethical infrastructure. It will promote innovative academic approaches to analyzing hope as a key factor in sustaining institutional and societal resilience during wartime and in shaping Ukraine's future vision.

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The forum will address the following key issues:

- Hope as a catalyst for national resilience: Examining its role in Ukraine's resistance and social cohesion against threats to independence.

- Political subjectivity of Ukraine in the context of war: Formation of new political narratives and structures through the perspective of hope for the future.

- War and national identity: How war transforms the national identity and political values of Ukrainians and the role of hope in active political participation.

- Hope as a factor of international support: How does hope for a victorious and democratic future for Ukraine shape the global support of the international community?

- Hope in the context of post-war reconstruction: The importance of hope in rebuilding a country, its political institutions, and democratic development after the war.

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The Forum will convene scholars and experts from diverse fields, including political science, sociology, philosophy, and theology, to conduct a comprehensive analysis of hope's role in social cohesion, civic participation, and political development. This interdisciplinary approach is essential for formulating effective strategies to support communities grappling with war-induced devastation and to envision post-war transformation strategies.

 

Building on the IHD Forums' legacy of nurturing young talent, the event will encourage student research and community-driven projects that investigate hope's practical applications and transformative potential.