Interview | Urban Media Archive

Two Months of War: Diaries and Ego-documents

This project records, disseminates, and analyzes Ukrainian experiences of the 2022 war. We envisage that individual feelings, as well as collective experiences, will become an archive – source for the researchers and historians of the future. This collection stands at the intersection of psychology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and art, holding both academic and human significance. The material encompasses diverse narrative and non-narrative productions, including digitally and non-digitally recorded war journals, photographs, drawings, short videos, and voice and musical recordings.

Thematic coverage of collected testimonies:
Diaries of war: written by hand or digitally born personal reflections on
Self-reflection (ego-documents)
Media (imaginary reality)
Life change (social aspects)
Relationships (family and friends)
Dreams of war
Personal visual stories
Visual memes and images from social media
Drawings

Diaries:
Since the onset of the war initiated by neighboring states against Ukraine in February 2022, students at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv) have commenced the practice of maintaining war diaries. The project was a collaborative effort between the Center for Urban History and the Department of Cultural Studies at UCU. Before resuming the educational process in Ukraine in the spring of 2022, students were encouraged to document what they witnessed, heard, and underwent. During the initial phase of this project (two months of the war), we collected 33 written diaries of students (the group consisted of more than 60 participants, but nearly half could not write diaries), many drawings, audio files, recollections or testimonies, and dreams.

How materials were collected:
The students were accompanied by a culturologist, a professional psychologist, and a philosophy teacher (also an expert in secular meditation). Students were advised on what to reflect on while avoiding emotional troubles, and every week, the core group met to discuss common progress. Most of the diaries were produced between March and May 2022; however, some would last until summer.

Formatting: some of the diaries were written by hand and translated, but most were produced either in the form of an online document or with the help of a Word text editor and converted into pdf format.

The project involved eight translators: two affiliated with the Center (Svitlana Bregman and Andrii Masliukh), and six professionals from outside (three persons were IDPs and three persons worked from abroad).

The project received support for translations from the “Documenting Ukraine” project (initiated by the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM, Vienna; and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, HURI).

Consultations, project management, and technical support:
Department of Cultural Studies, Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv, Ukraine)
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, the University of Jyväskylä (Finland)
The Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ICBM), the University of Bern (Switzerland)
The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University (USA)
Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) at Lancaster University (UK)

The Center for Urban History (Dr. Natalia Otrishchenko) facilitated and archived the project. The team consisted of the following:
Dr. Bohdan Shumylovych (Center for Urban History)
A/Prof. Ihor Kolesnyk (Lviv National University)
Natalka Ilchyshyn (Ukrainian Catholic University)

CONSULTANTS
Dr. Magdalena Zolkos (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Dr. Billy Glew (University of Salford, UK)
Dr. Ofer Dynes (Columbia University, USA)
Dr. Olha Yaskevych (Ukrainian Catholic University, Ukraine)
Dr. Mykola Makhortykh (University of Bern, Switzerland)