Ukrainian witchcraft trials in the 17th–18th centuries
19 September 2025
When: September 19, 2025 | 10 AM MDT
Presented by Kateryna Dysa – PhD and Associate Professor in the History Department of the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy".
ZOOM (Online-only presentation)
About the presentation:
Were there really witchcraft trials in 17th- and 18th-century Ukraine? What kinds of legal systems and religious factors enabled them? How did witchcraft accusations occur, and what was the typical social and gender standing of accusers and accused? Which issues generated the conflicts that led to such accusations? These questions and more will be addressed by Professor Dysa during her talk.
About the presenter:
Kateryna Dysa is an associate professor in the History Department of the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”. She has been a visiting fellow at Harvard, Stanford, Paris, and Oxford universities, as well as a visiting professor at the University of Basel. She is the author of Ukrainian Witchcraft Trials: Volhynia, Podolia, and Ruthenia, 17th and 18th Centuries (2023) and of numerous articles on the history of witchcraft, sexuality, and medicine in early modern Ukraine. Currently she is working on a project analyzing images of Kyiv in travel literature from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries.