On June 05–06, 2017 Kyiv hosted International Public Symposium “Empires, Colonies and Famine in Comparative Historical Perspective”. The event was organized by Holodomor Research and Educational Consortium of Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (HREC), led by Prof. Frank Sysyn (Canada), Holodomor Ukrainian Research Center, led by Prof. Liudmyla Hrynevych together with partners: Institute of history of Ukraine of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Charitable Fund “Ukrainian Jewish Encounter”, “Tkuma” Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies, project “Study of the Holocaust in Ukraine for the formation of an atmosphere of tolerance”, etc.

The discussions of the open seminar mainly focused on the topics of political mechanisms used in order to create hunger (in Ukraine, Bengal, China), methods of silencing and concealing the crimes, results of such a policy and reactions of the nationalistic, anti-empire and anti-colonial movements. Special attention was paid to the topic of the Holocaust and starvation in ghettos and concentration camps.

Among the participants of the symposium there were leading Ukrainian and foreign scholars – Kiril Feferman (Israel), Andrea Graziosi (Italy), Ziyabek Kabuldinov (Kazakhstan), Olia Andrievska, Stephen Velychenko, Bohdan Klid, Peter Gray, Janam Mukherjee, Roman Serbyn, Frenk Sysyn (Canada), Guido Hausmann (Germany), Mark von Hagen, MichaelHatcher, PaulShapiro (USA), VladyslavHrynevych, LiudmylaHrynevych, YaroslavHrytsak, Alla Kyrydon, Andrii Kulykov, Stanislav Kulchytskyi, Gulnara Bekirova, Oleksandr Lysenko, Yurii Ruban, Volodymyr Tylishchak, Igor Shchupak (Ukraine), Lucien Bianco (France), Tetiana Voronina (Switzerland) and others.

Within the framework of symposium the round table “Food as a weapon in the modern world” was conducted.