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- Convenors:
-
Nataliya Bezborodova
(University of Alberta)
Thomas McKean (University of Aberdeen)
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- Format:
- Panel+Workshop
Short Abstract:
The ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been called the most fully documented war in history, and still, it raised many challenging ethical and methodological considerations. How can we talk about the unspoken and unheard, even as much of the horror remains untold and untellable?
Long Abstract:
The ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been called the most fully documented war in history, with many developments appearing online almost instantly. This has raised many ethical challenges to researchers. What are the most challenging ethical and methodological considerations. What topics draw the attention of local and international researchers and what filters and lenses do they bring? Which social, demographic, and ethnic groups, and geographic regions are most represented or grossly underrepresented? How can minority voices find paths for dissemination of emic knowledge, experience, and methods? How can we help overcome the trauma of being silenced and encourage emic knowledge production? How can we undertake projects without access to ‘normal’ fieldwork methods? In these circumstances, how should we address issues of safety, ethics, and the researcher’s responsibility for the fieldwork materials? What alternative sources might be used? How can we advocate for, amplify, and honour the work of those killed by the invaders? Finally, how can we use our skills and expertise to say something about the unspoken and unheard, even as much of the horror remains untold and untellable?
The colossal shake-up of the full-scale invasion silenced all narratives for a brief moment, what Bernhard Waldenfels describes as falling into an “out-of-order” state, metaphorically wounded or injured. The active-to-passive balance shifts sharply to passivity and the process of healing requires restarting narrative and its interpretation.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
A major issue impacting the historical and aesthetic truth surrounding the Russian-Ukrainian war is the boundaries between the (un)spoken narratives. Which themes create traumatic accounts of life under occupation? How is the war experience of encountering the "other" communicated (non-)verbally?
Contribution long abstract:
The main source of the report consists of oral accounts of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which I recorded from 2022 to 2024. I will debate "taboo" topics and motifs that point to the hushed (quiet as dumbness, silence as the absence of someone who is present) based on hermeneutical and comparative analysis with other narratives about the occupation. The life stories of a father, daughter, and son from the Kherson region, reflecting on their subjective experiences of the war, serve as the basis for discussing the issue of the ‘limits of representation’ (Ankersmit) of traumatic memories and the truth about the war. The study begins with the thesis that ‘in contrast to trauma, language is ambivalent’ (Assman), and the ‘truth’ of life stories depends on genre, convention and memory.
Each narrative is analyzed in the categories of ‘spoken - unspoken’ using structural, linguistic analysis of interview episodes. The narrators employ various rhetorical devices to convey experiences of contact with the occupiers. Through direct questions, modal words, and vocabulary of aggression and dissent, it is demonstrated how the use of language marks "breaks" in consciousness and the inability to give a complete description of the ‘other’ as ‘alien’. The analyses of trauma images are focused on how people communicate their emotional reactions, feelings, and sounds that are expressed orally. I will demonstrate how communicative resources aimed at establishing optimal linguistic contact between the narrator and the listener are a way to point out the truth and everyday life and the untellable.
Contribution short abstract:
The base is an interview with a woman from Mariupol, recorded in Helsinki, 2023. The narrator's husband was detained during filtration and killed in a Donetsk prison. She describes her experience in a form of a list of dates and events, avoiding emotions, stories of other people, direct accusations.
Contribution long abstract:
The report is based on an interview with a woman from Mariupol, which was recorded in Helsinki in 2023. In May 2022, N. buried her husband who was killed in a Donetsk prison. Before that, he was detained during the filtration and a month later N. was told to come and pick up the body. In the summer, N., together with her mother and sister's family, came to Finland. She agreed to an interview six months after my request for a conversation. The woman worked with a psychotherapist for a long time. Before the conversation, she prepared an extract from those dates and facts that she considered necessary to tell. The narrator describes her experience in the form of a list of dates and events, avoiding emotions, stories about other people, direct accusations. It can be assumed that the woman believes that it is precisely this strictly reportural presentation of events that gives the story truthfulness. In a private conversation, in response to another refugee's remark that there was no point in talking about all this, N. said: "Well, we need to talk about Mariupol." That is, the narrator's story about surviving in Mariupol at the beginning of the Great War and about losing her husband aims to convey and preserve the truth about this terrible time.
Contribution short abstract:
Residents of Hostomel, near Kyiv, faced the Russian army's crimes from the start of its invasion. My family and others sheltered in a basement, enduring harsh survival conditions, emotional struggles, and hopes for evacuation amid intense fighting.
Contribution long abstract:
Residents of the village of Hostomel, located in the western suburbs of Kyiv, witnessed crimes committed by the Russian army from the first moments of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The international cargo airport “Antonov,” situated near the village, was deemed a strategic target by the Russian invaders. I was with my family in the basement of a multi-storey building together with other residents of the “Krokhmalny” district. I aim to describe the conditions of survival, people's emotional experiences, desperate hopes for an organized evacuation of the civilian population, as well as acts of individual resilience, particularly a resident of the neighboring city of Irpin who evacuated the residents of the village of Hostomel on his own. The occupation of the village in the early days made any social support from volunteers and local authorities impossible. My son (born in 2009) wrote in his diary about his experiences during our stay under occupation: “People are being evacuated from Irpin, Bucha, Kyiv, but only from the central district of Hostomel, and we are near the airport (“Antonov”), in the middle of hell. My mother is trying to get through to the officials (of the Kyiv City State Administration) to tell them that there are people alive near the airport” (March 3, 2022). The research materials include a handwritten diary kept by my son, as well as testimonies from neighbors and other people with whom we survived the first weeks of the war, which I documented.
Contribution short abstract:
In my presentation, I will analyze the possible and already tested methods of recording the war stories of those who are silent about their experiences, focusing on the methodology and ethics of documentation.
Contribution long abstract:
"The most documented war" comes to life through the war stories of those willing to share their experiences. This is the ethical and methodological requirement of war documentation projects. Archives of oral histories do not contain the voices of those who refuse to speak. The experiences of the traumatized and the unable to communicate are unspoken. Those who died or went missing are also silent. The archive lacks the voices of those who do not hold a pro-Ukrainian position, who acted badly under occupation, and those who may potentially be held accountable under Ukrainian law (document forgery, illegal border crossing, hiding from the military enlistment office).
How can we hear the experiences of these people, understand why they are silent, and what they are silent about? I will analyze the possible and already tested ways to record these stories, focusing on the methodology and ethics of documentation. The basis will be the narratives (36 interviews) that I recorded from May 2022. In the interviews of those who speak, we hear fragments of the fates of those who are silent.
My archive also contains stories that I heard in casual contexts. These voices do not have informed consent and are recorded in the form of my retelling, but they are not directed at a single listener but at a wide audience and are subordinated to its requests. Similarly, the choice of an interviewee during interviewing differs from the choice of a narrator by the community.
Contribution short abstract:
'Trauma talk' has become ubiquitous in Iceland recently. Public discourse is replete with stories of trauma and its aftermath. Key feature of this talk is its melodramatic character, its mobilisation to articulate stories of personal growth. This papers attends to the traumas thus left unwritten.
Contribution long abstract:
'Trauma talk' has become ubiquitous in Iceland in recent years. Public discourse, both in mainstream and social media, is replete with personal accounts of trauma, its causes, effects and aftermath. A key feature of this trauma talk is its distinctively melodramatic and redemptive character. Drawing on Peter Brooks notion of the 'melodramatic imagination' this paper highlights, first, how trauma talk in public discourse in Iceland works to tell stories of adversity, resilience and personal growth. The paper discusses how the melodramatic and redemptive character of trauma talk can work to erase discussions about the various different causes of trauma, thus psychologising and naturalising trauma as a condition. Secondly the paper discusses how stories of trauma without redemption, without personal growth are in the process left unwritten. Lastly, the paper relates the melodramatic character of trauma talk with the emerging subject position of victim/survivor, þolandi in Icelandic, and the demands this subject position makes of innocence and the simplification it effects on questions of responsibility, guilt and shame.
Contribution short abstract:
What does it mean to be a researcher amidst the humanitarian chaos on the Polish-Ukrainian border in 2022? How can personal involvement be balanced with the need for distance? This contribution explores the role of researchers and the ethical challenges of conducting fieldwork in crisis settings.
Contribution long abstract:
The more vulnerable the research participants, the more critical it becomes to reflect on the ethical implications of research methods. How should researchers employing an emic approach address participant vulnerability? How can the voices of those engaged in humanitarian action on the border be amplified without causing re-traumatization? When and where is it appropriate to interview displaced Ukrainians? How can the complex social dynamics of humanitarian action on the Polish-Ukrainian border in 2022 be captured while ensuring an ethically sound ethnographic approach?
My doctoral dissertation examines the humanitarian infrastructure along the Polish-Ukrainian border and the migratory trajectories of displaced Ukrainians. It is based on 18 months of fieldwork, conducted from April 2022 to October 2023, involving participant observation and semi-structured interviews with displaced Ukrainians and volunteers.
In this contribution, I aim to highlight the unique methodological challenges of navigating dual roles as both a researcher and a member of the studied community—whether as a volunteer or a displaced Ukrainian. How distinct or blurred are the boundaries between these roles? How essential is it to document informal conversations in the role of a volunteer, and how ethical is it to do so?
I also explore the best practices for amplifying the voices of all humanitarian participants and how sensory observations—such as auditory, olfactory, and visual methods—can enrich our understanding of the realities on the border. Ultimately, I aim to share insights into the lessons learned from these methodological challenges and discuss how they can inform future research in crisis settings.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper studies Crimean Tatars under Russian occupation, focusing on absences, silences, and erasures caused by systemic repression. It examines the constraints of surveillance, the value of fragmented narratives, and the persistence of identity despite forced displacement, suppression and exile.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper explores the application of "negative methodology" in the study of Crimean Tatars living under Russian occupation since 2014. Negative methodology, as articulated by Yael Navaro (2020), provides a framework for engaging with absences, silences, and erasures resulting from systemic repression. For researchers of Crimea, violence, such as occupation, war, and state surveillance, creates, significant barriers to traditional research methods, necessitating innovative approaches that center on the (im)possibilities of knowledge production.
The paper focuses on two key aspects of negative methodology: the limitations imposed by violence and surveillance and the value of fragmented narratives. Under occupation, the pervasive presence of state control constrains fieldwork or even makes it completely impossible for many researchers. Researchers must contend with restricted access to the field, the risks of endangering participants, and the ethical imperatives of protecting sensitive information. Remote documentation, reliance on digital traces, and attention to what cannot be accessed emerge as critical strategies. Furthermore, the fragmented nature of Crimean Tatar experiences—shaped by forced displacement, the suppression of public practices, and political repressions —aligns with the negative methodology’s embrace of partial, incomplete accounts. By foregrounding silences and fragments, the study highlights the persistence of Crimean Tatar identity within the voids created by systemic repression.
Anthropologists who study fields under violence, such as occupation, also face emotional and methodological challenges, balancing advocacy and academic rigor. Ethnography of absent field offers critical insights into resilience and power dynamics under occupation, contributing to broader discussions on human rights, cultural preservation, and political agency.
Contribution short abstract:
The research examines the Soviet toponymic changes as part of the Crimean Tatars' genocide, that erased their culture and history from Crimea. Today, as debates about Crimea's future intensify, it is vital to amplify indigenous voices and acknowledge their rightful place in the peninsula’s history.
Contribution long abstract:
The paper explores the Soviet campaign of toponymic alteration in Crimea after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, illustrating how this deliberate erasure of indigenous place names altered the peninsula's identity and history. By replacing Crimean Tatar toponyms with artificial Soviet names, Moscow constructed a new ideological landscape that legitimized settler-colonial narratives and erased the Tatars from the peninsula’s memory.
This topic is particularly timely as discussions about the future of Crimea gain momentum amid potential negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Understanding the historical processes behind the erasure of the Crimean Tatars’ history is critical to navigating these conversations. The Crimean Tatars’ case highlights the profound power of toponymy in shaping collective memory and its role in ongoing struggles for cultural and historical justice.
Today, reclaiming these historical toponyms is not merely symbolic but an act of resistance against continued cultural erasure under occupation and a way to make silenced voices heard in the global arena. However, this research faces ethical and methodological challenges, as the peninsula remains under occupation where deliberate suppression and erasure of indigenous culture continue.
By addressing these issues, this talk aims to amplify the often-overlooked voice of the Crimean Tatars, offering insights into the peninsula’s decolonized history. It contributes to broader discussions on cultural preservation, historical justice, and the ethical responsibilities of reconstructing silenced narratives in contested landscapes.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper focuses on the challenges faced by contemporary Ukrainian researchers of the history of Luhansk region and the reasons why some topics remain unwritten
Contribution long abstract:
The research focuses on the history of the easternmost region of Ukraine – Luhansk, which has been partially occupied since 2014 and has been fully occupied by the Russian Federation since the end of 2024. These events have drawn considerable attention to the region. There was an urgent need to reassess approaches to understanding its history, so a significant number of historical studies have been published over the past ten years. So why does the question arise that something remains silenced?
The study finds that there are two groups of reasons why a part of stories about Luhansk history remains unwritten despite the active work of Ukrainian researchers. The first is the lack of historical sources, the vast majority of which remained in the occupied territory or were taken to the Russia during the XIX – XX centuries. The second group is ethical. Soviet myth about “Russian Donbas” is developed in modern Russian historiography, especially in so-called “LPR” – the textbooks, monographs, dissertations, conferences etc. as part of propaganda have been creating the idea of Luhansk as an exclusively Russian region. But polemics with these “historians” will lead to their legitimization for the academy. Other problems are self-censorship due to fears about the fate of relatives in the occupied territory, and the extremely emotional perception of the region's history among Ukrainians. So, both sets of reasons make it difficult to study the history of Luhansk region, despite its importance for understanding the current Russian-Ukrainian war.
Contribution short abstract:
The unspeakability of trauma is well known. However, Frosh argues that "the failure to deal with trauma" is not "the failure of speaking" but rather "the failure of listening". Can this idea be applied to the Ukrainian trauma? How can we listen to the unspeakable and untold?
Contribution long abstract:
Our silenced past can haunt us as a ghost. The history repeats itself. The ugly ghost of the past has come to life again, opening new wounds on top of the old traumas that still remain not fully ’digested’. Millions of lives have been broken or destroyed by the totalitarian machine. Ukraine has a long history of silenced traumas due to the ‘code of silence’ imposed by the government. The situation is very different now. We want to speak about our collective trauma. However, is there always the audience that wants to listen?
Furthermore, the former KGB archival materials remained ‘secret’ until 2014. Today, despite many years of forced silence, we can rethink and reflect on the traumatic experiences of our past that can help make more sense of our today's struggles.
In this presentation, you will be invited to re-engage with the past through opening some archival materials collected by the presenter at the State Archive Department of the Security Service of Ukraine in 2021 (criminal cases of Soviet Ukrainian dissidents declared 'insane' and incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals).
However, can we uncover authentic voices in these archives? How can we invite the ghost of the past to speak while working with them? While trying to come to terms with our own emotional responses in research, how can we avoid the two extremes described by LaCapra as "full identification" and "pure objectification"? How can we listen without being traumatised ourselves? How can we ensure that we approach the material ethically?
Contribution short abstract:
The war in Ukraine has changed perceptions of both the Ukrainian and Russian languages: Ukrainian as resistance and Russian as aligning with the Russian aggressor. This paper will explore the ideological dilemmas that Russian-speaking Ukrainians face when it comes to shedding their mother tongue.
Contribution long abstract:
What do Ukrainians feel when they hear Russian out in public? It depends on who you’re asking. Some have stated that it makes them angry and uncomfortable while others have asked, which Russian; Russian with the Moscow accents or with the Ukrainian accent? Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been making news headlines with their stories of shedding the Russian language in favour of Ukrainian. The position of the Ukrainian language has shifted in Ukrainian society as a language of nationality and most importantly, a language of resistance against Russia. However, languages cannot be abandoned so easily as many Ukrainians may hope it is. It is tangled in our identities, our relationships, and our memories. Therefore, Russian-speaking Ukrainians are in a predicament; do they abandon Russian in favour of ‘politically correct’ language or do they risk scrutiny for choosing to keep speaking a language that is now associated with the Russian aggressor? This paper brings forward an uncomfortable dilemma of whether or not to be tolerant of the Russian language when spoken in a Ukrainian community in Alberta, Canada. Through interviews and ethnographic research, the author will explore the current role of the Ukrainian language in regards to the Russo-Ukrainian war and how Russian-speaking Ukrainians are navigating their choice to fully-switch to Ukrainian or to speak Russian behind closed doors and how that has affected their perception of what it means to be Ukrainian in Ukraine and beyond its borders.
Contribution short abstract:
The paper argues that unwritten voices on the challenges in the Baltics of Russian armed offensive in Ukraine since 24 February 2022 may reveal new features of the Lithuania’s risk society that will be useful for the global risk society. The paper discusses the challenges in the ethnography of war.
Contribution long abstract:
The paper argues that unwritten voices on the challenges in the Baltics of the Russian armed offensive in Ukraine since 24 February 2022 may reveal new features of the Lithuania’s risk society that will be useful for the global risk society. The hot question is: how has the closing of borders caused the physical world to shrink and the virtual world to expand immensely in the countries bordering the Baltic Sea? This question is a source of debate in the literature. This is the starting point for the argument of the discussion, which aims to show how the war in Ukraine has affected individual coexistence and social communality. Methodologically, we study this crisis from an anthropological and historical perspective as it is perceived today. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork. The paper discusses the following challenges in the ethnography of war. How can we carry out projects on Lithuanian-Russian border issues without access to ‘normal’ fieldwork methods? What did ethical issues arise in documenting memories and voices of Lithuanian people after the Russian armed offensive in Ukraine? How can we help overcome the trauma of being silenced and encourage emic knowledge production?
Contribution short abstract:
This paper explores the ethical hazards and scholarly opportunities in researching Ukrainian youth values during wartime. Special attention is given to how oral history methods can both enhance or restrict youth agency, which requires nuanced approaches and contextualization.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper reports on a collaborative oral history project between Adelphi University (US) and the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Problems of Education. It first explores how researchers can tackle the ethical challenges of “crisis” research, foregrounding oral history methods. There has been an expansion of conducting oral history during crises, yet there remains a gap in the literature on the best practices and specific methods. Some practitioners adopt a more perilous framework that casts oral history as “cathartic but not therapy.” Others adhere to strict research designs to document people’s subjective experience for historical preservation. This paper examines: Is there an ethical middle ground between reaching for cathartic release alongside rigorous methodology for the collection narrators’ memories? If so, what methodologies, training and supports are needed to collect testimony in a crisis environment? How exactly can a research design guard against the risk of re-traumatization of narrators? Should researchers bear witness or uncover the ways in which youth construct meaning beyond the trauma-resilience narrative? These questions are investigated in the context the strengths and limitations of the project’s use of a Charmazian-constructivist grounded theory coding system, which was employed to evaluate analytical categories related to civic values, agency and resilience among Ukrainian high school students and teachers during the acute phase of war.
Contribution short abstract:
My project is an interpretation of folk traditional ornaments and symbols, combined with the bible texts into a modern art. It is a unique combination presented in my works. I believe, this project will make people feel the pain, Ukrainians carry inside, and see the beauty of reviving traditions.
Contribution long abstract:
Interpreting traditional ornaments into something new and unusual has been one of my main tasks. My goal for an art presentation is to make Ukrainian culture popular again and to convey to the world that if we do not make every effort to preserve our culture now, it may disappear.
The Ukrainian language, songs, clothes and even dishes were once repressed, but our people managed to preserve them despite the strict prohibitions. It is important to pass on this hidden cultural wealth to the next generations in a modern form. I want to show that ornaments are not just embroidered flowers on a white shirt, but deeper symbols such as prayer. This approach expands the boundaries of the use of ornaments, making them relevant in other areas of art: tattoos, posters, photography, video, etc.
The fear of losing my national identity prompted me to create a project in which I spread the idea of preserving culture through text encoded in Ukrainian ornamentation. To do this, I use the alphabet from Volodymyr Pidhirniak's book «Textual Embroidery».
During the war, prayer and faith became my comfort, so my works are based on biblical texts and symbols, which gives them a deep meaning. The red and black colors symbolize the blood of Ukrainian soldiers and the black soil on which this blood is shed in the struggle for Ukraine, its culture and people.
It is an honor for me to make the art presentation to share the witness of my suffering culture.
Contribution short abstract:
The paper analyses the advantages and limitations of using public media communication by scholars in Ukraine, decribing why and how classical anthropology starts to find new completely different forms of being delivered to a wider audience, and what challenges scholars face under new circumstances.
Contribution long abstract:
The paper provides an analysis and proposes a discussion about a contemporary science popularization in Ukraine.
Over the past decade there has been a growing interest in getting profound knowledge in Ukrainian history, cultural anthropology and sociology among the broad parts of Ukrainian society. This interest has to be connected with the impact of the Revolution of Dignity, the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022. These events shifted the decolonization processes, inspiring the society to reshape and rethink their given knowledge from the past, as well as to overcome the trauma of silencing different topics since the Soviet time.
To meet this public demand with broader interest in culture and history, different educational and popular science projects started to apper, including Lokalna istoriya, Likbez, Yizhakultura, Istoriya bez mifiv, Porobleno and many others. All of them were created by people with academic backgrounds.
Ukrainian scholars have to step into a new field of publicity and search for modern ways of knowledge sharing and production, facing specific challenges under new circumstances, including issues with online content making, lack of funding, battling with disinformation and Russian propaganda etc.
The paper analyses advantages and limitations of such public media communication, covers the issue of knowledge production from the ground by those who owns the knowledge. It also decribes how classical anthropology (in the form of a written text) starts to find new different forms of being delivered to a wider audience.