Vitalii Shchepanskyi

Vitalii Shchepanskyi

Mykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian State University


  • Research topic:
    Ritual in the City: Neo-Shamanism as a Form of Spiritual Healing in Ukraine
    Period:
    July – August 2025
  • facebook icon twitter icon email icon telegram icon link icon whatsapp icon

Ph.D. Received his higher education and postgraduate training at the National University of Ostroh Academy (2007-2015). In June 2013, he completed an internship at Enskilda Högskolan Stockholm (University College Stockholm, Sweden). In 2016, he defended his PhD thesis in religious studies. He was awarded a scholarship by the President of Ukraine (2014-2015).

During 2015-2018, Vitalii worked as a researcher and lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at the National University of Ostroh Academy. In 2016, he was awarded the Jerzy Giedroyc International Prize for the best PhD thesis. In 2018-2019, he completed a research internship at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland) as a scholar of the international program "Studium Europy Wschodniej" (Warsaw University). In December 2018, he was awarded a scholarship at the Neo-Latin Scholarship on the Slavs (Bratislava, Slovakia).

Since July 2019, he has been working on the development of a network of science museums in Ukraine as part of the National Center Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Since 2020, he has been a member of the Workshop of Academic Religious Studies. In 2024, he entered the doctoral program at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of the Drahomanov Ukrainian State University. His research interests include the history of religious anthropology, neo-shamanism, spiritual ecology, and the history of philosophy.

During his research residency at the Center for Urban History, he will work on the study of neo-shamanistic practices as forms of spiritual healing in Ukrainian cities. He will focus on contemporary ritual practices, their presence in urban space, and their connection to the experience of trauma, the search for meaning, and the sacred. During the residency, the researcher will focus on preparing the final text of a publication that highlights neo-Shamanic practices in the context of urban culture and the transformation of marginalized forms of religiosity in Ukraine.