Documenting War Experiences: Oral Testimonies and Social Media Archives in Ukraine

A Conversation with Scholars from the Center for Urban History, Lviv, Ukraine

Monday, October 31, 2022 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM EDT
Zoom Webinar

We are proud to collaborate with the Department of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington to present:

Sofia Dyak, Taras Nazaruk, and Natalia Otrishchenko from the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine will talk about the work of their Center documenting the war through oral history and preserving social media archives during a time of war. How can scholars of the present help preserve a moment in history for historians of the future?

Dr. Sofia Dyak

Dr. Sofia Dyak is a director of the Center for Urban History (Ukraine), an institution focusing on research, digital and public history, and educational programs. She received her PhD at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw). Her research interests include post-war history of border cities, heritage and urban planning in socialist cities and their legacies. Another area of her work is public history, including curating exhibitions and spatial commemorative projects in urban context. Dr. Dyak was a fellow at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Historical Dialogue and Accountability Program at Columbia University and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Currently she is also a senior research fellow the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam. Dr. Dyak is a member of board of directors of Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter (Ottawa) and of academic board of the Centre for Historical Research in Berlin of the Polish Academy of Science. 

Natalia Otrishchenko

Dr. Natalia Otrishchenko is a research fellow at the Center for Urban History in Lviv and an associated researcher at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam. She holds a PhD in Sociology (2015) from the Institute of Sociology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Since March 2022, Natalia has led the Ukrainian team within the "24/02/22, 5am" international documentation initiative. The Fall, she will be a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University. Natalia is interested in the methods of sociological research, oral history, urban sociology, spatial and social transformations after state socialism.

Taras Nazaruk

Taras Nazaruk is a head of digital history projects at the Center for Urban History in Lviv

His background is in journalism (BA, University of Lviv, Ukraine), media studies and communication design (MA, University of Wroclaw, Poland). Since 2016 he has been working as a coordinator of the Lviv Interactive, the digital encyclopedia on the modern history of Lviv. His areas of interest include digital history, digital storytelling, social media archiving, Soviet cybernetic legacy, Internet histories, and media studies. During the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he's been working on a Telegram archive of the war.

You can support the important work of the Center for Urban History here.

Steven Harris

This session will be moderated and was co-organized by Dr. Steven Harris, who is Professor in the Department of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington and author of Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin. He is also the co-organizer of the Second World Urbanity project and is currently at work on a new book project, "Flying Aeroflot: A History of the Soviet Union in the Jet Age."

Introductions are made by series organizer Steven Barnes, Director of the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University.

This lecture is part of George Mason University's Fall 2022 Lecture Series, "Russia's War on Ukraine in Historical Perspective." For other events and information on the series, visit the main series page.

Register for the Zoom webinar for this and other events in the series.

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