Katya Tolstaya

Theologian | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Katya Tolstaya is a systematic theologian and works at the at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Institute for the Academic Study of Eastern-European Christianity (INaSEC). She is also Founding President of the International Association for Post-Soviet Theology and Study of Religion (PAST).Her main research and valorisation interest is to establish the totally new field of interdisciplinary and interreligious post-Soviet theology, within the interdisciplinary landscape/scope of post-traumatic, post-totalitarian and post-genocidal studies. Theology after Gulag is the first phase of this project. Tolstaya has created a global network to support her in this ambition. Tolstaya obtained her MA (cum laude, 2000), and her PhD (cum laude, 2006), both at the Protestant Theological University (PThU), Kampen, The Netherlands.

Dr. Tolstaya was laureate of a prestigious NWO VENI Talent Scheme Innovational Research Incentives Humanities (2009-2012). As a Visiting Professor, she teaches in different post-Soviet countries, e.g. at Lev N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan, and at the Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine. She was Visiting Researcher at the Karl Barth-Archiv, Basel (2009) and recently Visiting Fellow at Aleksanteri Institute, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies, University of Helsinki (May-July 2017).

Tolstaya’s initial research was dedicated to Western systematic theology, a.o. Barth and early dialectical theology, and literary studies, a.o. Dostoevsky and Bakhtin. For over a decade Tolstaya’s research focuses on the post-Soviet religious revival, and the role of theology in public and societal engagement with the past. To promote the research field of post-Soviet theology she has established three international research networks: the project “Theology after Gulag” within INaSEC; a research group “Theology after Gulag” in the Netherlands School for Advanced Study of Theology and Religion (NOSTER); and an NWO-Internationalisation in the Humanities network on the Russian Orthodox Church (2015-2018). These projects engage over twenty academic, ecclesial and cultural institutions, and NGO’s, and over fifty committed international scholars and stakeholders working in post-Soviet studies, post-Holocaust theology, transitional justice, Gulag studies and further related fields who support her call for a rethinking of methodological and theoretical issues in the study of post-Soviet religion and theology. With her INaSEC-team, Tolstaya devotes herself to a broad valorisation program, varying from international conferences and public lectures to exhibitions.