Olga Shparaga

Philosopher, Editor, Author

Olga Shparaga, PhD, born 1974, taught philosophy at the European College of Liberal Arts in Minsk (ECLAB) until 2021, which she co-founded in 2014. She studied in Minsk and Bochum. From 2001 to 2014 she taught philosophy at the European Humanities University in Minsk and Vilnius, since 2005 a Belarusian university in exile in Lithuania. She has taught and researched at universities and academic centres in the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Germany and the USA.

2006–2014 she was editor of the intellectual journal »Novaja Eŭropa« (»New Europe«).

She is a member of the scientific council of the journals Ideology and Politics Journal and pARTisan. She is the author of three books. The Community-after-the-Holocaust. Towards the Society of Inclusion (Minsk, ECLAB-books, 2018, in Russian), was awarded as the best philosophical book by the International Congress of Researchers in Belarus in 2019. Olga Shparaga is a co-editor of 7 anthologies. In summer 2021, her book Die Revolution hat ein weibliches Gesicht. The Case of Belarus by Suhrkamp Verlag. In Russian, this book was published in Vilnius in 2021 and awarded the Ales Adamovich Literature Prize of the Belarusian PEN Centre in 2022. In December 2022, the book was published with a new chapter in Lithuanian.

Olga Shparaga is a co-founder of the Fem Group in the Coordination Council around the Belarusian opposition politician Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. As a member of the feminist group, she was imprisoned in October 2020. In order to escape a threatened criminal trial, she fled to Vilnius. Olga Shparaga lives in exile and has been a fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (https://www.iwm.at/fellow/olga-shparaga) since July 2022.

Recent academic publications:
The Case of Belarus. Caring for Each Other and the Future of Democracy//Forum № 425, May 2022, p. 11ff, https://www.forum.lu/article/der-fall-belarus/ fbclid=IwAR0Q2YKU7db53eYlfagGzDroqD2S1NSrC5aJdOhhmlMjpP4esTsx5i1gTbQ

A Feminist Framework for Understanding the Role of Women in the Belarusian Revolution: Domestic Violence, Care, and Sisterhood, 01.11.2021//Chronicle from Belarus, IWM (Vienna), https://www.iwm.at/blog/a-feminist-framework-for-understanding-of-the-role-of-women-in-the-belarusian-revolution?fbclid=IwAR3lDf5gtqsZnmA1INtoJQd7lH7ETf89M1vqSZyWLd2zOVgsgQ07XIQU1wI

Pluralist Europe Across borders, or how to counter right-wing and authoritarian populists (18.08.2020): http://magazine.erstestiftung.org/en/pluralist-europe/

New Emancipatory Agenda: Critique of Patriarchy, Non-discrimination, Eco-consciousness, Real Equality and Social Art. In: pARTisanKa, №34, 2020. pp. 9–17: https://www.academia.edu/43084231/Olga_Shparaga_New_Emancipatory_Agenda

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Social_Art_In_pARTisanKa_34_2020_Pp_9_17

Good Universalism. A View From/Of Belarus. In: springerin,–Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, 3/2017, p. 52–55 (in German): https://www.springerin.at/en/2017/3/der-gute-universalismus/

Border Crossings as a Common Resistance to Injustice (also in English and Russian), article on the Goethe-Institut project »The Border«, Nov. 2017: https://www.goethe.de/ins/ru/de/kul/arc/k19/gre/aus/21156244.html

Hospitality and postnational community in Europe beyond EU borders. In: Perspectives on European Hospitality. History–Cultural Practices–Critique. Edited by B. Liebsch and M. Staudigl. Velbrück Wissenchsaft, Weilerswist 2016. pp. 579–594.

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