U-CORE

Researching the Collecting, Preserving, Analysing and Disclosing of Ukrainian Testimonies of the War

Recording from the September project seminar

2024-09-19

“Testimonies from the War” seminar - Second round of interviews: first report from the field research

2024-09-05

Dr Olha Krasko's participation in two major scientific events

2024-09-03

Research and documentation project


 

The U-CORE project (full title "Research on the collection, storage and sharing of Ukrainian war-time testimonies 2022") is a continuation of documentation activities initiated in spring 2022 as part of the "February 24, 2022, 5 a.m.: War Testimonies" initiative by researchers from Ukraine, Poland, Luxembourg, Great Britain and Germany, whose aim was to record the Ukrainian experience of a full-scale invasion.

After collecting over 210 testimonies of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, 50 testimonies in Luxembourg and interviews with 150 internally displaced persons and volunteers in Ukraine, we are starting to conduct research on this material as part of a three-year grant financed by the National Science Center in Poland and the National Science Fund. Research in Luxembourg.

As part of our project, we will contact selected interviewees again to record a second round of interviews according to the previously developed methodology. Then, the interviews will be processed and all sources (first and second round interviews from Poland, Ukraine and Luxembourg) analyzed, including using innovative qualitative data analysis software. We will focus on the language of the interviews and the analysis of narrative structures, the formation of biographical and social memory about the Russian invasion, identity issues and migration strategies chosen by the interlocutors. The project will pay particular attention to issues of methodology and ethics of collecting, analyzing and sharing data on the ongoing armed conflict.

We will also work to create a unified digital environment that will become a destination for the entire collection and possibly, in the future, attract source materials from other projects. As a result of the project, the recorded interviews will be made available to people interested in conducting research and educational work at selected stationary access points using safe Open Source software. We will also undertake numerous popularization activities, such as preparing a graphic novel and an animated film, which will make it possible to bring the stories of our interlocutors to a wider audience in a way that allows sharing sensitive content.

The project will be implemented in cooperation with research teams from Luxembourg, Poland and Ukraine.

Research team


 

The project is implemented by three cooperating research teams from Ukraine, Poland and Luxembourg.>

Polish team
Anna Wylegała
Team leader, interviewer
Anna Wylegała is a sociologist and researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her work focuses on the social history of World War II and the post-war period. She is also interested in qualitative social research methodology, oral history and memory studies.…
Olha Krasko
Post-doc researcher, interviewer
Olha Krasko is a historian from Ukraine, post-doc at IFIS PAN. In 2013-2023 she was a fellow researcher at Karazin University in Kharkiv. In 2022 – 2023 ashe was scholarship holder of the German Institute in Warsaw, where she completed an oral history project «University people and war» and participated…
Olena Kondratiuk
Researcher, interviewer
Olena Kondratiuk: anthropologist, PhD in history, head of the Department of Ethnology at the State Scientific Centre for the Protection of Cultural Heritage from Technological Disasters, member of the Ukrainian Oral History Association. Her research interests include kinship ties, gender studies, anthropological…
Róża Kochanowska
PhD student, administrator
Research interests: Corpus linguistics, language of war, lexicography, computational linguistics, history-language connections.For years, she has co-organised the annual conferences of the Memory Studies Association (Warsaw 2021, Newcastle 2023, Lima 2024, Prague 2025).
Alona Tron
Post-doc
Alona Tron, PhD, is a historian working on the history of the Second World War, diaspora and memory studies as well as oral and public history. Until 2023, she worked at the Global Ukrainian Studies at the Faculty of History, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, teaching courses on diaspora…
At the previous stages of the project, the following people were also involved in the documentation work: Małgorzata Wosińska (supervision), Katarzyna Jędraszczk, Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek, Magdalena Lapshin, Jaryna Łazar, Małgorzata Łukianow, Emil Majuk, Maria Mazur, Irena Panków, Roman Romancow, Natalia Wisłocka.

Ukrainian team
Natalia Otrishchenko
Team leader, interviewer
Dr. Natalia Otrishchenko is a sociologist and researcher at the Center for Urban History in Lviv. She was involved in the “Region, Nation and Beyond” (2012–15, University of St. Gallen), “Memories of Vanished Populations” (2012–14, Lund University), “Historical Cultures in Transition” (2017–19, Collegium…
Valentyna Shevchenko
Data manager, interviewer
Dr. Valentyna Shevchenko is Candidate of History, equivalent of PhD (2009). Historian, researcher, and administrator of databases in the documentation projects at the Center for Urban History; senior research fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the NAS of Ukraine. Areas of academic interests:…
Artem Kharchenko
Interviewer
Artem Kharchenko is a historian and lecturer at Kharkiv's I. P. Kotliarevsky National University of Arts, where he is currently working on a monograph entitled ‘The Jewish Community in the Imperial City Space, 1859-1923’. He is also working on the project ‘Orphanages in Soviet Ukraine during the Holodomor,…
In addition, in 2022 the following people were also involved in the design work in various capacities: Oksana Dudko, Yevhen Horb, Myroslava Liakhovych, Roman Moldavskyi, Serhii Pakhomenko, Viktoriia Panas, Diana Vonnak, Dana Yakovenko, Nataliia Zinevych.

Luxembourg team
Machteld Venken
Team leader
Machteld Venken is a Professor of Contemporary Transnational History and Head of the research unit on Contemporary History of Luxembourg at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). She studied Slavic Languages and Cultures, European Studies and History in Belgium, Poland and…
Inna Ganschow
Researcher
Dr Inna Ganschow is a research scientis and an expert in 20th and 21st century migration, media, and literature, focusing on Russia, Ukraine, and Luxembourg. She has published books and leads research projects on topics such as multicultural migration and forced laborers during WWII. Ganschow is a co-founder…
Kateryna Zakharchuk
Ira Yeroshko
PhD student
Ira Yeroshko is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) in Luxembourg and has started working on the U-CORE project in March 2024. Her current research project consists of analysing the use of visual media, such as film, animation and graphic novel, for creating the…
Vladyslav Siulhin
Vladyslav Siulhin is a Bachelor's student in Computer Science who works at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) in Luxembourg as a student assistant for the U-CORE project. He joined this project in May 2024. His current work involves solving technical issues for the project and assisting…

Methodology and Ethics


 

Methodology and ethics are very important in this project because its participants are vulnerable population, and the project itself is being implemented during an ongoing conflict.

Before the interview

Researchers contact people with whom they recorded interviews during the first phase of the project (2022-23) (only those who agreed to this). We will only interview people who are in a stable situation, who are not experiencing any serious crisis and who are not dependent on us. We want our interlocutors to really want to talk about their experiences.

The researcher's task is to make people participating in the project do so consciously. The researcher describes the situation of the interview itself, the objectives of the study and the further fate of the material. We pay special attention to the mental well-being of our participants, conversations with people with any signs of emotional crisis are excluded. Interviewees will receive the topics covered during the interview in advance and will have the opportunity to mark questions they do not want to answer and add questions they would like to include. The assumption of the entire study is an inclusive research methodology, aimed at providing the interlocutor with the greatest possible control over the structure and content of the conversation.

We give priority to on-site interviews whenever logistics allow. Online interviews are acceptable if the individual has been relocated to a remote destination beyond the logistical possibilities of travel (e.g., Canada, USA) or remains in a territory deemed unsafe by the researcher. /researchers make risk assessments but must inform the team of their decisions and take all possible measures to ensure the private safety of their interlocutors.

During a conversation

In this project, we create a situation in which the interviewee has the decisive say in various aspects, such as the time and place of the interview, the duration of the conversation, the level of anonymity and the specificity of using his testimony for various purposes, such as academic, educational or artistic. For us, the recording consent document is a space in which the participant can specify their preferences regarding the storage and administration of their data.

The interview focuses on personal experience, with particular emphasis on changes in everyday life since the first interview was recorded. We share the topics we will cover in the interview in advance so that our project participants can better prepare for the interview. We will talk, among others: about migration routes, changes in family relationships, changes in professional life, volunteering, etc. The interview is also an opportunity to discuss the experiences related to our first meeting: how it influenced the person's well-being and how the process of participating in the interview recording can be assessed.

Since we are conducting a project on the ongoing war, part of our reflection is devoted to the issue of sensitive information. Part of our methodology is a participatory approach; therefore, we will discuss this topic during the interview in order to develop a holistic and comprehensive definition of sensitivity, which will be transformed in the research process into a set of metadata in the digital environment where the interviews will be stored.

Post-interview

Researchers will contact participants by telephone the day after the interview to check whether the interview caused any discomfort. We will also keep in touch with each recorded person over a period of time. Recordings will be treated with confidentiality and caution. If the caller wants to remove certain parts from the recording, they will be cut out. The recording consent also includes room for additional requests from the participant regarding their certificate, e.g. an embargo on their use in a specific country or for specific purposes. If a participant withdraws his or her participation in the project, the recording will be excluded from the collection.

All interviews will be transcribed and stored in a secure digital space. For the duration of the project, copies of all certificates will also be  uploaded to the CatDV software administered by the University of Luxembourg, which enables members of all teams to work with the entire collection in a secure digital space. Once the project is completed, the collection will be made available via a secure digital platform available at selected on-site access points.

Our team holds regular supervision meetings with a psychologist, and ad hoc psychological support is also offered to our interlocutors.

 

Ethical assessment

The project received ethical approval at the national level (consent of the Polish Oral History Society and the Ethics Committee of the University of Luxembourg. We also received suggestions from our Scientific Council, which we followed before starting the interview collection process.

News


 

  • Recording from the September project seminar

    2024-09-19

    “Testimonies from the War” seminar - Second round of interviews: first report from the field research We invite you to watch the recording of the September seminar! HERE

  • “Testimonies from the War” seminar - Second round of interviews: first report from the field research

    2024-09-05

    “Testimonies from the War” seminar - Second round of interviews: first report from the field research 11.09.2024, 18:00, Zoom From the beginning of our documentation project, which has been ongoing since March 2022, its premise was the longitudinal nature of the research. We wanted to return to…

  • Dr Olha Krasko's participation in two major scientific events

    2024-09-03

    At the end of August, Olha Krasko, researcher in the U-CORE project, participated in two scientific events - the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission workshop ‘(Not)Far from the War: The Russo-Ukrainian War in Refugees` Testimonies, Oral Histories and Diaries’ and the Witnessing the War in Ukraine Summer Institute 2024 event - ‘Testimony in the Pursuit of Justice’. At the workshop she gave a talk on ‘Follow-up interviews with Ukrainian refugees within…

Scientific council


 

We are supported by the Scientific Council in the implementation of the project, which is composed of distinguished scientists from various countries, including those with experience in conducting research on topics that correspond to the subject matter of our project. The Council meets twice a year in an online format to discuss the current status of the project.

Victoria Sereda - Ivan Franko Lviv National University
Daria Mattingly - University of Cambridge
Stephen Naron - Yale University
Nerina Weiss - Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Studies
Barbara Engelking - Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów
Dariusz Stola - Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN
Katerina Kralova - Charles University
Tetiana Zhurzhenko - University of Vienna
Maryna Grymycz - pisarka, antropolożka

Results


 

In this section we will be informing you about the results of our work - publications, conference talks and communication with the wider audience.

  • Chapter by Anna Wylegała, in the book "The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict and War Crimes", published by Routledge

    2024-10-04

    "The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict and War Crimes. Challenges for Documentation and International Prosecution".  This book offers a multidisciplinary examination of the international crimes committed in the Russia-Ukraine War, and the challenges of their prosecution and documentation. As the largest international armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia’s war against Ukraine has provoked strong reactions and questions about the post-1945 world order, the utility of the war, and the effectiveness of international criminal justice. Throughout the chapters in this volume, scholars and legal practitioners from Canada, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, the UK, and the United States present the results of interdisciplinary research, insights from the perspective of other post-communist states, and first-hand expertise from directly working on the documentation and prosecution of these crimes. This offers a broader picture of post-Cold War relations and sheds light on the roots and nature of the war and the importance of regional approaches. The chapters also present some possible responses to the crimes committed in the conflict, with a focus on a victims-centered approach to transitional justice. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of international criminal and humanitarian law, security studies, peace and conflict studies, and Eastern European history. The chapter written by the leader of the Polish team, Anna Wylegała is titled Ethical and Methodological Challenges of Documenting the War: Recording Testimonies of Ukrainian Witnesses After 24 February 2022. The…

Listen to the interviews


 

Here you will soon find a selection of audio excerpts from interviews recorded in Poland. The audio files will be accompanied by a transcription (in your choice of Polish, Ukrainian or English). The excerpts will be anonymised and assigned to ten themes, such as, for example, the invasion of Russian troops and the occupation, daily life during the full-scale war or adaptation to life in Poland.ipsum.

We encourage you to plan the use of this publicly available material in educational, exhibition and artistic activities.

The selection of excerpts was made possible thanks to the support of the initiative by the Mieroszewski Centre.

Contact


 

Please contact team leaders in each country:

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