Kyiv’s Medieval Glory: Things in Heaven and Earth | Kultura 2025
Date and time:
Monday 22 September, 2025
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
ONLINE
Dr Olenka Z. Pevny
📍 University of Cambridge
Associate Professor of Slavonic and Ukrainian Studies, University of Cambridge
Lecture Title:
Kyiv’s Medieval Glory: Things in Heaven and Earth
Lecture Synopsis:
Today, Kyiv stands under the shadow of ballistic missile attacks launched by Russia, and we think of the city in connection with the courageous Ukrainian people who have defied a nuclear-armed state in defence of their homeland, their rights, their children’s future, and the values of liberty, sovereignty, and self-determination that define modern European culture.
Yet Kyiv’s glory reaches far deeper into the past. In the medieval period, the city flourished as the political, cultural, and ecclesiastical heart of the land of Rus’. Positioned along vital river trade routes, it prospered through the exchange of goods and ideas, becoming a crossroads of cultures.
This lecture explores Kyiv’s medieval heritage—its remarkable monuments and artefacts—in both their original setting and through the changing interpretations they have acquired over centuries. It examines how cultural dialogue shaped the city’s landscape and affirms that the past is a reality in its own right, not a tool to justify the political ambitions of the present.
Lecturer
Dr Olenka Z. Pevny
Dr Olenka Z. Pevny is a cultural historian specialising in medieval Kyivan Rus’ and the early modern Ruthenian-Rus’ lands. Her research explores the role of visual culture and transcultural exchange in shaping premodern identities across the Slavic world. She has served as a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and has taught the history and culture of Byzantium, Rus’, and Ukraine at leading universities in the USA and Ukraine. She is currently Associate Professor of Medieval Rus’ and Early Modern Ukrainian Culture at the University of Cambridge.
Dr Pevny is the author of numerous works on Byzantine, Rus’, and Ukrainian visual culture, including contributions to The Glory of Byzantium (The Metropolitan Museum, 1997), the edited volume Perceptions of Byzantium and Its Neighbors (Yale, 2000), and the chapter “Art and Transcultural Discourse in the Ukrainian Lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth” in Multicultural Commonwealth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023).
