Guest lectures play an important role in the educational process, as they broaden our knowledge and provide us with the opportunity to gain unique insights from experts in their respective fields. On the 20th of March, such an expert to the students and faculty of KSPU was James Kapaló, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Study of Religions, Deputy Head of the College of Research and Innovation, College of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Social Sciences at University College Cork (profile). The topic of the lecture was “Rethinking Religious Undergrounds: Religious Materials and Secret Police Archives in Eastern Europe”. In his lecture, James Kapaló explored the significance of archival materials for reinterpreting religious processes and the adaptations of religious cults that took place under communist dictatorship.

Mr. Kapaló emphasized the indispensable role of studying secret police archives, as they serve as primary repositories of unique materials on the life and activities of underground religious communities. Building on the findings of the Hidden Galleries ERC project, which focused on researching the secret police archives of Hungary, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, Mr. Kapaló introduced a set of tools that leverage scholarly methods to better understand the agency and creativity of underground religious communities under Soviet surveillance. In this way, he uncovered the processes of religious change that have shaped the religious landscape of contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. Mr. Kapaló presented a multi-layered, hybrid assemblage of texts, objects, and images gathered by the communist-era secret police as incriminating evidence and suggested ways these materials have gained evidential value for the study of religion under communism.

This event was made possible through the fruitful collaboration of the Department of History, particularly Assistant Professor Oleksandr Korotaiev, who is directly involved in the international research project "History Declassified: The KGB and the Religious Underground in Soviet Ukraine." This project is initiated by the Irish government and the Irish Research Council and is being conducted at University College Cork under the leadership of James Kapaló and Tatyana Vahramenko from the Institute of Future Humanities at University College Cork.