Dear Colleagues, 

  

We are delighted to invite you to the international symposium "Entangled Lives: Roots, Borders, and Inter-Ethnic Relationships in Eurasia" organized as a part of international collaborative research between Ritsumeikan University and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.  

This symposium examines the historical and contemporary entanglements shaping inter-ethnic relationships across Eurasia, with particular attention to forced migration, exile, and diasporic formation. Bringing together scholars working on Central Asia, Russia, Armenia, Manchuria, and Korean diasporic communities, the symposium explores how displaced populations have navigated imperial collapse, Soviet modernization, and post-socialist transformation. Topics include White Russian return migration, Ukrainian nation-building in exile, Korean deportation to Kazakhstan, Molokan religious mobility, and the cultural practices sustaining Koryo Saram identity. By situating these case studies within broader Eurasian trajectories, the symposium highlights how memory, religion, kinship, and transregional networks function as adaptive strategies through which minority communities negotiate belonging and preserve cultural distinctiveness across shifting political and social contexts.  

Language: English 
Translation: English-Japanese-Russian 

Organizer and moderator: 
Dr. Viktoriya Kim, Ritsumeikan University 

Co-organizer: 
Institute of Humanities, Human and Social Sciences, Ritsumeikan University 

Programme:  

09:30 Opening Remarks  

      Dr. Viktoriya Kim, Associate Professor, Ritsumeikan University (Japan)  

 

Dr. Olga Khomenko, Visiting Scholar (Associate Professor), University of Oxford (UK)  
Paper Homelands: How Ukrainians in Manchuria Built a Nation in Exile (1932-1937) 

 

Dr. Ksenia Golovina, Associate Professor, Toyo University (Japan)  

Spiritual Christians with Roots in Russia: Mobility, Practices, and Contacts of Molokans in Armenia 

 

Dr. Gulbanu Zhugenbayeva, Associate Professor, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan)  
Historiography of the Deportation of Peoples to Kazakhstan: The Case of the Korean Population 

 

Ruzgar Ozgonul & Lorenzo Russo, Research Assistants, Ritsumeikan University (Japan) Rehabilitated but Not Restored: Repression, Silence and the Politics of Survival Among the Koryo Saram 

 

12:30-13:30 Break  

 

13:30   Following Session

      Prof. Chika Obiya, Professor, Kyoto University (Japan)

      Not to Moscow or Leningrad, but to Tashkent: Cases of White Russians' Return to the Soviet Union 

   

Tobias Stefan, PhD Candidate, Humboldt University Berlin (Germany)  
Flavors of Fusion: Food as Cultural Heritage among the Koryo Saram in Uzbekistan 

 

Yefrem Yefremov, Senior Research Fellow, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan)  
Intra-family Hierarchy in the Ritual and Everyday Culture of Koryo Saram as a Factor in the Preservation of Identity 

 

Tamir Batkhuyag, Monet Kogure, & Veronica Musaeva,  

Research Assistants, Ritsumeikan University (Japan)  
Narratives of Everyday Life, Belonging, and Transformation in the Hybrid Identities of Koryo Saram 

 

16:00-16:30 Q&A and Closing Remarks