Recentring the Humanities: Ukraine and the World marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies by asking how the place of Ukraine, Ukrainians worldwide, and Ukrainian studies is being reconsidered within a rapidly changing global order. In the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the field has gained a heightened geopolitical and cultural visibility that brings with it both opportunity and obligation. 

The symposium examines the conceptual and epistemic shifts this moment has prompted across scholarly discourse and asks what it means to move Ukrainian studies from the margins of area studies toward the centre of contemporary debates in global history, society, and the humanities. Bringing together internationally recognized scholars, experts, and thought leaders, and connecting several major international initiatives, it serves as a forum for critical debate on Ukraine's role in shaping how these fields are understood.

Looking toward the next fifty years rather than only back across the first, the symposium is conceived as a working space for the field's future. Its sessions are designed to shape a shared research agenda, to strengthen the international networks on which Ukrainian studies increasingly depends, and to bring emerging scholars into sustained dialogue with established ones through mentorship-oriented formats. Equally, it is open to the wider public and to the communities whose histories and futures are bound up in this work, in keeping with CIUS's long commitment to scholarship that reaches beyond the academy. Across its panels, presentations, and discussions, Recentring Humanities aims not to commemorate an institution so much as to set the terms for the conversations that will define the next half-century of the field.