Participation in the 23rd Conference of the International Association for Oral History "Re-Thinking Oral History"

On September 16-19, the 23rd conference of the International Oral History Association IOHA "Re-Thinking Oral History" took place in Kraków, which was joined by Liana Blikharska, Dr. Valentyna Shevchenko, and Dr. Natalia Otrishchenko from the Center's team. This is the first event of this association in the region, organized by the local committee: Polish Oral History Society and the Faculty of History at the Jagiellonian University.

Together with researchers and scholars from Japan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Poland, Italy, and the United States, Natalia Otrishchenko spoke at the plenary session "Oral Historians Facing Crises: Attitudes, Fears, and Hopes." This discussion focused on the challenges that oral history faces in times of emergency. During the conversation, the participants talked about security in a critical political situation and in a pandemic, the peculiarities of rapid response and long-term preservation of stories, and the right to speak and to remain silent. Among other things, they also reflected on their own positionality in relation to witnesses and research topics, on balancing expectations and responsibilities, and on the changes that occur to oral historians under the influence of the stories they hear.

Liana Blekharska participated in two conference panels: "In Between? Bridging Histories: Challenges and Innovations in Documenting European Borderlands" and "Oral History, Memory and Memorialization in the Aftermath of Violence and Political Repression." The first, organized by colleagues from the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, discussed the experience of the educational project for students "In Between? Neighbors Meet in the Borderlands," in which participants recorded oral history interviews while exploring European borders. In this format, oral history is not only a scholarly field, but also a part of activist practice and a tool for building interaction, connections, and dialogue. The second panel, organized by the Ukrainian Oral History Association together with colleagues from the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Canada, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, discussed oral history, memory, and memorialization in the context of researching periods of violence, war, and political repression. In her presentation "Retold (?) War: Oral History Projects on World War II in Ukraine after 2022," Liana spoke about the research field in Ukraine and public history initiatives that have experience in transferring or combining the study of World War II and the events of the current war-how this has affected areas of interest, research focus, and methodology.

In a separate session "Gathering, Archiving, Disclosing: Oral History of the Ukrainian Experience of 2022- Russian Aggression" Natalia Otrishchenko and Valentyna Shevchenko had the opportunity to present the developments of initiatives to document oral testimonies of Russia's war against Ukraine "24.02.2022 5 am: Testimonies of War" and "U-CORE". Together with their colleagues from Poland and Luxembourg, they shared their experience of conducting an extended international oral history research in the face of uncertainty and existing threats. Presenting different aspects of the initiative, the researchers discussed the challenges and solutions related to re-interviewing respondents and creating a digital environment for processing, preserving, and publishing the collected testimonies. In their presentation, Natalia Otrishchenko, together with Dr. Anna Wylegała, the head of the Polish team, focused on new ethical and methodological challenges for researchers in working with sensitive data. In particular, they emphasized the gaps between the way institutions and researchers define "sensitive information" and the way interviewees talk about it. Continuing the topic, Valentyna Shevchenko in her presentation raised the issue of metadata created on the basis of informed consent with the interviewee, the search for optimal tools for storing, managing and disseminating interviews while respecting the conditions set by the interviewees.