The Faculty of Philosophy of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań extends an invitation to an international conference Ukraine: towards the West. Culture, Values and Language. The conference will be held in an online format. 

It will have been, in February 2025, four years since Russia initiated a comprehensive, large-scale military campaign against the entire nation of Ukraine. It is crucial to acknowledge that this conflict represents a direct continuation of the initial phase of the war that commenced in 2014. Since then Ukraine has accelerated its process of rapprochement with the West, both in terms of geopolitics and culture. Of particular significance is Ukraine's rapprochement with the European Union. The Russian aggressor has been treating this war as a cultural war and it is a war against the values of the Western world. Despite the differences between its member states, the European Union is founded on recognition of freedom of the subject, human rights and on respect for the rights of minorities. This academic conference responds to the absurdity of war propaganda and will demonstrate the importance of voluntary interpersonal and intercultural relations between two or more people.  

The conference will explore current issue of the cultural relations between contemporary Ukraine and the West, with a particular emphasis on Europe. The title of the conference reflects the objective of the event, which is to examine the nature of mutual relations in respect these three distinct levels. The first level is constituted by culture, which is founded upon values (second level). Language, the third level, is understood as a means of communication that enables the exchange of values between the West and Ukraine, and between Ukraine and the West. Furthermore, language serves as a conduit for transcending feelings of estrangement, fostering mutual comprehension and veneration of disparate ways of life. And ultimately, language establishes proximity at the individual, social, and intercultural dimensions.

The conference will explore topics such as:

1. Ukraine's relations with the West in the cultural sphere and ways of understanding culture.

2. The influence of politics in shaping intercultural relations.

3. Meeting of Slavic and Western philosophies – strategies for avoiding essentialisms.

4. Ways of defining values and common values.

5. The conceptualisation of freedom.

6. Discourses and policies pertaining to the equality of all individuals, including the rights of minority groups.

7. Strategies for the construction of ‘a unified world’ with a view to eliminating prejudices, feelings of strangeness and otherness.

8.  The experience of strangeness/otherness in the context of human migration.

9. Language as a vehicle for communication within a cultural context.

10. The significance of glottodidactics in the formation of intercultural relations.