Summer School in Humanities
in honour of Hannah Arendt
The Metaphysics of Action
The Missing Third Floor
Intellectual life often has a first floor — public discussion —
and a second — education.
What is missing is the third: research.
Who we are
Third Floor is a research initiative working at the intersection of academia and real-world transformation.
We focus on how new understanding emerges in relation to concrete questions — in education, institutions, and civic life.
Working within the Ukrainian context, we bring together researchers and practitioners to develop approaches that can be applied in real settings.
We are building toward a research center, currently operating through summer schools and collaborative research.
What we do now
The research center is still in development —
but the work has already begun.
Each year, we gather researchers, students, and practitioners in our Summer Schools to work on shared questions and explore how research can engage with real processes of change.
This work continues through collaborative projects and an emerging academic community.
What We’ve Built —
And What’s Next
Each Summer School is a temporary research environment —
where shared questions are explored through collective work, dialogue, and lived context.
Lutsk 2024
The first summer school, Human Becoming, dedicated to Omeljan Pritsak, explored how humaneness takes shape in times of transformation — through shared work between researchers and practitioners.
Uzhhorod 2025
The second summer school, Metaphysics of Action, dedicated to Hannah Arendt, explored the relation between thought and action in times of transformation — bringing together researchers and practitioners in a shared space of work.
Chernivtsi 2026
The upcoming summer school, Collective Agency: Intentions and Conditions, will explore how shared action becomes possible — and what conditions allow it to take shape.
We Give It Form
We are preparing a special issue of the Diarkrisis Journal (Sankt Ignatios), dedicated to transformation.
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This work extends into academic writing —
as participants develop their research into texts, entering a shared space of publication.
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The issue brings together an emerging academic community across contexts,
while placing particular emphasis on supporting research practices in Ukraine.
We Show How It Happens
What emerges through shared work can also be seen —
in gestures, conversations, and the space itself.
A short film from the last Summer School —
capturing how the work unfolds in practice.
We Work with Institutions
Our work develops in collaboration
with academic institutions and organizations
that engage in education, research, and societal transformation.
We Organize the Work
The project is shaped by a group of researchers
working across academia and practice.
Anastasiia Tarasova
Phd student in Dragomanov Ukrainian State University,
Researcher of the British aesthetic tradition (late 19th–early 20th century)
Marie Teich
Senior Lecturer at American University Kyiv.
Marie completed her PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute of Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig in the subject of digital humanities.
The topic of her PhD combined questions in Cognitive Linguistics and philosophy of language with network based data analysis.
Yuliia Naidych
Head of the Byzantine Department, Sankt Ignatios Folkhögskola
Her research engages with educational practices and the idea of paideia, examining how learning forms the person — intellectually, ethically, and within a shared cultural horizon.
