News & Activities

2023

– On 1 April Irina Paert gave a presentation “A Clergyman’s Daughter at the Age of Equality” at the BASEES Annual conference 2023 (Glasgow, 31 March-2 April 2023).

– Irina Paert, Andrey Shishkov and Alison Kolosova participated in the 2nd mega-conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association in Volos, Greece (11-15 January 2023). More then 400 participants joined the largest forum of Orthodox scholars in the world. 

Irina Paert presented a paper “‘May All Our Enemies Be Struck with Terror’: How Do Orthodox Christians Pray for Peace in the Year 2022?” at the session “Teaching and Praying Orthodoxy on the Basis of the Patristic Sources in Modern Slavic Theology.” She also recorded a lecture in the series “IOTA Talks“ on Orthodox conciliarity. And moderated two sessions. 

Alison Kolosova presented a paper “Limits of Inculturation: Nikolai Ilminskii’s Missionary Vision and Its Implementation in Late 19th/Early 20th Century Russia” at the session “Slavic Orthodoxy and Mission, 19th-20th c.” She also gave an IOTA Talk on the Orthodox mission today.

Andrey Shishkov presented a paper “God, Grace, and Object-Oriented Approach” at the session “Philosophical Theology as a Pattern for Metaphysical Speculation.”. He was one of the speakers on the panel discussion around the newly published book “The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars.” Shishkov and Paert also participated in panel discussion on the document “For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church.”

 

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2022

– On 7-8 December Andrey Shishkov and Irina Paert gave a two days lecture course on the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church in the Ministry of Education and Research of Estonia.

– On 16 November Orthodoxy as Solidarity project presented a special forum “Confession, Loyalty, and National Indifference” (Ab Imperio 2, 2022). Participants: Liliya Berezhnaya (University of Münster), Catherine Gibson (University of Tartu), Irina Paert (University of Tartu), Darius Staliūnas (Institute for Lithuanian History), James A. Kapaló (University College Cork). Andrey Shishkov served as a moderator. 

The Forum includes five articles that address the problem of emerging collective identity through the entanglement of complementing and conflicting forms of groupness: religious, political, and ethnic. The introductory essay conceptually frames these studies in terms of national indifference and confessional ambiguity, underscoring the role of religious collective identities in forging other forms of groupness–ethnocultural and political.

– Irina Paert and Andrey Shishkov held a workshop on Orthodox solidarity and sobornost’ at the Pro Oriente conference “Listening to the East – Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Eastern Orthodox Church” (Rome, 2-5 November 2022). See program and videos of presentations here. 

– On 31 October Andrey Shishkov presented a paper at the conference “Churches at War: Eastern Christianity and the Invasion of Ukraine” organised by the Collegium for Advanced Studies of the University of Helsinki (31.10–01.11.2022). He told about the role of Patriarch Kirill in supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

– On 22 October Orthodoxy as Solidarity project organized a colloquium “Sobornost, Solidarity and Humanity” in the framework of the conference “To Be Human: New Approach to Life and Education in Times of Crisis” (Tallinn, 20-22 October 2022). In the colloquium took part prominent Orthodox and Ecumenical scholars – Fr. John Behr (University of Aberdine), Irina Paert (University of Tartu), Davor Džalto (Stokholm University College), Alison Kolosova (University of Tartu), Sr. Vassa Larin (ROCOR), Br. Adalberto Mainardi (Monastic Community of Bose), Natallia Vasilevich (University of Bohn), and Ljubov Kisseljova (University of Tartu). Andrey Shishkov served as a moderator of the event. 

– Alison Kolosova was a co-organiser of the conference “African Soundscapes: Theological, Anthropological and Legal Approaches” at the Department of Social Theology and the Study of Religion, University of Athens, 11-12 October 2022.

– Irina Paert presented a paper to the conference “Ethnic relations in the Baltic reconsidered” that took place on 16-17 September at Yale McMillan Centre.

– On 13 September, two members of the project Andrey Shishkov and Irina Paert participated at the international conference “Adolf von Harnack: bridging the gaps” that took place on 12-13 September at the University of Tartu, organized by the member of the project Priit Rohtmets. They have presented a paper ‘“It is not true that Germany is guilty of having caused this war”: Adolf von Harnack, war and the responsibility of intellectuals. Some reflections on the past and present.’ Paper analysed Manifesto 93, a collective declaration signed by 93 German intellectuals (A. v. Harnack among them) in support of the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 and compared it with reaction of Russian scholars on the invasion in Ukraine in 2022.

– On June 27–29, the project participants gathered in Pärdi on Saaremaa for the BootCamp to discuss our research and plan further actions. Fruitful discussions continued with a one-day tour of the Orthodox churches of Saaremaa and finished in Kuressaare. 

– On 12-14 June, two members of the project participated in the 6th Annual Tartu Conference on Russian and East European Studies: Catherine Gibson chaired a panel on “Restoration of Lithuanian Independence Revisited” and Andrey Shishkov participated as a discussant in the section “Religion, Politics and Society”.

– The first issue of SALT, a new journal of Orthodox intercultural theology, dialogue and mission, has been published. Alison Kolosova is Assistant Editor of the journal and has published an article ‘Christendom Cracking at the Seams: Indigeneity, Conciliarity and Catholicity at the Kazan 1910 Missionary Conference’ in the first issue. She also contributed two book reviews to the journal. Salt Ιssues – saltalas.com 

– On 18 May Alison Kolosova, Irina Paert, and Andrey Shishkov served as discussants on the online roundtable “Orthodox Christianity and War: A Deliberation”, hosted by the Centre of World Christianity at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

 

– On 12 May Catherine Gibson was invited by Durham University to participate in a virtual roundtable to discuss her new book, Geographies of Nationhood.

 

– On 13 April Irina Paert, Catherine Gibson, and Andrey Shishkov participated in a joint seminar with colleagues from the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences on the topic: “The Interplay of Ethnic and Religious Identities in Changing Historical and Social Contexts.” Irina gave a presentation introducing our project entitled: “Exploring Orthodox solidarities in Estonia: methodology and findings of one research project.”

 

 

– On 7 April the project invited Prof Peter Gatrell (University of Manchester) to give a public talk on “Refugee crises in Europe in the 20th century: history lessons for today’s world“.

 

– From 31 March to 1 April, Andrey Shishkov participated in the conference “Catholic and Orthodox Social Ethos after Laudato Si” organized in Rome by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Konrad Adenauer Foundation. His presentation was called “Theologian in Dark Times.”

– On 12 January 2022 Alison Kolosova gave a lecture for the Centre for World Christianity at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London with the title “Mission, conciliarism and ecumenism in the early 20th century: the view from Russia.”

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2021

– Irina Paert’s article “Conciliarity in the Borderlands.The Riga Orthodox Council (Sobor’) of 1905 and the Church Reform Movement in Imperial Russia“ will be published by Journal of Ecclesiastical History as Open Access, thanks to the agreement between Cambridge University Press and ELNET Consortium, of which the University of Tartu is a member.

– Alison Kolosova, an associate member of the project who will join the project as a contributing member in 2023, has co-organised and successfully carried out a series of IOTA Missiology Group International Lectures, involving 15 scholars and missionaries from Africa, Asia, Europe and America. The recordings of these lectures will be soon available online. The first lecture uploaded on youtube is Dr Christian Sonea and focuses on Mission in Romanian Orthodoxy and is available here.

– Andrey Shishkov, Alison Kolosova and Irina Paert will participate in the IOTA-2023 Mega-conference. The news has just been announced that the second four-yearly mega-conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association will take place in Volos, Greece on January 10-15, 2023.

The host of the conference is Volos Academy for Theological Studies and its Director is Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis. The format of the conference will be in-person only. The Call for Papers will become available in February 2022. There are expecting 150-200 speakers. The members of the project will be presenting at the plenary sessions as well as at the panels organised by their respective IOTA groups: Paert is a co-chair of Spirituality and Asceticism Group and Kolosova a co-chair of Missiology group, Shishkov is a member of the steering committee of the Ecclesiology Group. The plenary sessions will dedicated to the problems of the pandemic and Orthodoxy and to the new Document by the Ecumenical Patriarchate “For the Life of the World: Towards the Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church“.

– On 13 December Riho Altnurme gave an online presentation at Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Theologie [Scientific Society for Theology], section Kirchengeschichte [Church history], entitled “Ökumenisches Gedenken an die Märtyrer Estlands 1919: Nationalismus und Religion”.

 

– On 8 December Catherine Gibson participated in the BASEES archival workshop, giving a talk to postgraduate students about working in archives in Estonia and Latvia.

– On 1 December Irina Paert and Catherine Gibson participated in the virtual ASEEES convention and presented papers in a double panel on “Solidarity Contested: Religious, Ethnic, and National Solidarities and Indifference in Russia’s Western Borderlands, 1830s-1930s”.

– On 23 November Irina Paert visited the Narva Museum to to discuss ideas for cooperation and future partnerships. Many thanks to the director, Maria Smorževskihh-Smirnova, and all the museum staff for their warm hospitality. We look forward to future collaborations!

– On 1-4 September Catherine Gibson participated in the 14th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, at Uppsala University, Sweden. She presented a paper entitled: “Zooming in and out on religion, language, and nationality: Census-taking and questions of scale in the Baltic provinces”. Her participation in the event was supported by a travel grant from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS). Full programme here. After the conference, Catherine also wrote a short reflection about the event which was published on the AABS website here.

– On 18-20 July project members based in Estonia gathered for three days in the village of Nina on the shore of lake Peipsi for a “Bootcamp”. After months of Zoom meetings, we enjoyed being able to meet in person to discuss our research and future plans for the project, as well as to tour local Orthodox churches in Nina and Varnja and the Old Believer prayer house in Varnja. We sampled the local cuisine at the Old Believer Onion and Fish Restaurant in Kolkja and grilled in the evening at the Nina Kordon Guesthouse. Many thanks to Irina for organising the event!

– James White won the 2020 Canadian Association of Slavists/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Article of the Year Award for his article ‘Russian Orthodox monasticism in Riga diocese, 1881-1917‘.

Here are the jury’s comments:

In this erudite and highly engaging essay James White reconstructs the social and religious histories of three Russian Orthodox convents and one Russian Orthodox monastery, all of which were established in Riga diocese in the late imperial period. He masterfully charts the ways in which non-local and local religious, civic, and government leaders combined resources and created Orthodox religious networks throughout the empire and abroad to transform a backwater diocese into a prominent Russian Orthodox site that began to compete successfully with institutions of Lithuanian German Lutheranism and German civilization prior to the onset of World War I. The article constitutes a major contribution to the histories of religion, regional developments, and empire-building and russification within the imperial realm as well as global Orthodoxy.

– On 7 June Irina Paert and Catherine Gibson organised a panel at the Tartu Conference on Russian and East European Studies at the University of Tartu on the topic of ‘Religion and National Indifference: Historical Perspectives from Imperial Borderlands.’ They also co-presented a paper on ‘Religion, National Indifference, and Forms of Solidarity.’ Full programme here.  

– On 28 May Irina Paert, Catherine Gibson, and Andrey Shishkov presented papers at the ‘Representing Multiculturalism: An Interdisciplinary Conference’ held at the University of Tartu. Full programme is here.

–  Irina Paert was nominated by the Estonian Research Council to join the AcademiaNet portal as an excellent female researcher and research team leader. ‘Naisteadlaste portaali AcademiaNet lisandub 48 Eesti teadlast.’ Postimees, 26 March 2021.

 

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held a workshop on Orthodox solidarity and sobornost’ at the #ProOriente conference “Listening to the East – Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Eastern Orthodox Church.”