Summer School in Humanities
in honour of Hannah Arendt
The Metaphysics of Action
Summer School
in Transformative Research
Collective Action:
Intentions & Conditions
Cross-disciplinary Summer School of Transformative Research for young and experienced researchers who are inspired to work on ideas for the creation of the common future - Ukrainian - in dialogue with a global vision of a shared world of humane action.
The School is an invitation to take the perspectives of philosophy, history, theology, and other disciplines not only as rich traditions of academic work, but also as one common path for the process of sense making itself to engage and transform.
Our context
In the midst of war and violence, the need to deepen our understanding of humanity is greater than ever.
War calls for memory, for history, for sensibility — for new meanings. If no one responds to its voice, it does not fade,but turns its emptiness against humanity.
Our task is to resist it by filling that void —to turn the violence directed at us into a question of metaphysics.
The Third
interdisciplinary summer school
Collective Action:
Intentions & Conditions
We explore how collective action becomes possible —and what conditions allow it to take shape.
From different perspectives, we examine how individual intentions enter a shared space and become coordinated action.
This year, the work is grounded in concrete practices.
We engage with traditions of memory culture and with the experience of institutions such as Borderland, reflecting on how collective agency is formed within real historical and cultural contexts.
Our aim is to understand how collective agency emerges not as an abstract idea, but through lived practices — in institutions, communities, and forms of life.
How It Was in 2025
moments, lectures,
discussions
from the previous school
We Invite
- Students
exploring whether a research path is right for them
- PhD students and early-career researchers
seeking dialogue within a community
- Young researchers
looking for spaces where their ideas can lead to real change
in search of intellectual community and new directions for transforming their work
and the systems around them
- Practitioners: active citizens and entrepreneurs
We Want To
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Build bridges between thought and action
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Connect the Ukrainian context to global intellectual dialogue, treating Ukraine’s challenges as starting points for rethinking global issues
-
Rethink academic approaches in response to changing realities
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Create a collaborative space where ideas and practice meet to shape systemic change
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Bring together those who act and those who think about transformation
How the Programme Works
Research
Seminars led by faculty and invited scholars
Participant research presentations and discussions
Close reading and collective work with key texts
Practice
Collaboration with Ukrainian organisations and initiatives
Exploring how research can enter real-world processes
Workshops and practices for shifting perspectives
Community-building and shared formats of engagement
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
A Shared Space
We see the school as something we build together.
Each participant contributes to its shared space, atmosphere, and activities.
We invite you to take an active part:
— in creating an environment where different perspectives and personalities feel welcome
— through your own research interests
— preparing a talk or contributing to the school publication
— and, of course, by bringing something of your own
— even a small moment of shared experience
At this school, your initiative matters — whether it’s a discussion, a game, or a music evening.
Ready? Click here to apply!!!!
Dr. Zittlau will lead a workshop on collective dream writing and bookmaking. Together with the participants, she will explore dreams not only as private experiences, but also as reflections of social and political realities, drawing on Freud’s Traumdeutung and Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have created a personal dreambook shaped by a shared creative process.
Teachers & Courses
The Politics of Dreaming:
From Freud to Charlotte Beradt
Dr. Andrea Zittlau
Dr. Andrea Zittlau is a poet, creative writing instructor, and cultural scholar. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and teaches literature and cultural analysis at the University of Rostock. Since 2015, she has led poetry and creative writing workshops in prisons, juvenile detention centers, nursing homes, and community settings in Germany and the United States. She is also the founding director of the Pink Gorilla Institute, a nonprofit organization that develops writing workshops and publishes their outcomes in zines and art books.
Dr. Birgit Stammberger
Collective Agency and Feminist Epistemology
Beyond individualistic Frameworks
Dr. Birgit Stammberger is a cultural researcher at the University of Lübeck. Her work focuses on feminist science and technology studies, gender in science, and psychoanalysis. She is the Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Research Centre subproject “Bringing Gender into Science and Back!”, which examines androcentrism in molecular biology theories and models of prenatal sex development. Since 2025, she has chaired the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, an international association for cultural studies scholars.
In her workshop, Dr. Stammberger will invite participants to rethink agency, knowledge, and political imagination beyond individualistic frameworks. Drawing on feminist epistemology and thinkers such as Helen Longino, Judith Butler, and Sara Ahmed, the workshop will explore how knowledge is produced collectively through solidarity, shared vulnerability, discomfort, and resistance. Participants will discuss how marginalized experiences can become visible within shared interpretive frameworks, and how collective practices may transform both epistemic and political life.
Dr. Kate Robinson
The Art of Recognition:
Colour, Drawing, and Solidarity
Dr. Kate Robinson is a sculptor and author based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work brings together visual art, material practice, and reflective inquiry, exploring how artistic forms can open ways of thinking about identity, perception, relationship, and the inner life.
In her workshop, Kate Robinson will invite participants to explore solidarity through colour, drawing, and shared visual practice. Drawing on Rowan Williams’s reflections on recognition, empathy, and the care of the soul in Solidarity, the sessions will use art as a practical way of sensing and thinking. Participants will work with colour as a system of relationships, create individual and collective drawings, and reflect playfully on identity, emotion, and what it means to see and understand another person.
An Evening with Richard Sennett!
Richard Sennett is a sociologist and one of the leading contemporary thinkers on cooperation, public life, and the ethics of living together. His book Together will open this year's Summer School before we welcome him for an online conversation.
During the opening community circle, participants will read and discuss selected passages from Together. Later that evening, Richard Sennett will join the group online to continue the discussion and respond to the questions raised through the reading.
Our Partners
1. Borderland Foundation
Borderland Foundation is a cultural and educational organisation based in Sejny, Poland.
Through artistic, educational, and research initiatives, it fosters dialogue across cultures and communities.
From Encounter to Partnership
In preparing this Summer School, we turned to Towards Cosmopolis by Krzysztof Czyżewski.
The book became part of the conversations through which we shaped the programme and reflected on the kind of intellectual community we hoped to create.
But some books only truly begin with the last page!
Soon afterwards, Third Floor co-organiser Maria Teich took part in Dilemma Academy, organised by the Borderland Foundation. What began with shared ideas and educational experience has since grown into a lasting partnership, through which the Foundation now supports the Third Floor Summer School.
2. Nourished by Kus-Kus
For several years, our Summer School has been supported by Kus-Kus, a Kyiv restaurant built around the idea that food brings people together. Throughout the week, shared meals become another space for conversation, friendship, and community.
This support has been made possible thanks to Svitlana, who has stood by Third Floor for more than one Summer School. Her generosity and trust have become a valued part of the community we are building together.
Our Team
Marie Teich
Senior Lecturer at American University Kyiv
Yulia Naidych
Head of Byzantine Department Sankt Ignatios folkhögskola
Anastasiia Tarasova
Phd student in Dragomanov Ukrainian State University
Join The Conversation
If you have questions or would like to learn more,
we’d be glad to hear from you
Email: sommerschool.lutsk@gmail.com