Guest Lecture | Natalia Khanenko-Friesen (University of Alberta) | Testimony Research in post-2022 Ukraine: Mapping the Field

The ScienceCampus is delighted to be welcoming Natalia Khanenko-Friesen on Wednesday, 7 November at 16:15 for a guest lecture on testimony research in post-2022 Ukraine.

Abstract: On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine. In response to this unfolding humanitarian trauma of massive proportions, hundreds of researchers, professionals, and community activists in Ukraine, various countries in Europe and beyond, turned to recording and documenting the flood of testimonies unleashed by the war. The scale of this massive research mobilization is as unprecedented as the scale of displacement and trauma that the war caused. With the beginning of this renewed attack of Russia on Ukraine, I engaged in scholarly outreach, advocacy work, delivery of training of prospective researchers, and monitoring the ongoing interview-based research of the war. As a rapid response initiative, I founded and co-led two institutes Witnessing the War in Ukraine: Summer Institute in Oral History. By 24 February 2023, the oral history interview-based project database was up and running, now profiling interview-based oral history projects announced and pursued by various teams between February 2022 and February 2023. In my presentation, employing the lenses of oral history and cultural anthropology, I offer a preliminary analysis of the war-testimony research

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and Director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies in the Faculty of Arts at University of Alberta, Canada. Also, she serves as the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography at the Kule Folklore Centre. Cultural anthropologist by training, and a long-term practitioner of oral history, Natalia’s research primarily focuses on diaspora studies, labour migration, Western Canada, Ukrainian Canadian culture and Contemporary Ukraine studies as well as the war in Ukraine.

Some of her many publications include Ukrainian Otherlands: Diaspora, Homeland and Folk Imagination in the 20th Century (U Wisconsin Press 2015) and, The Other World or Ethnicity in Action: Canadian Ukrainianness at the end of the 20th century (Smoloskyp Press 2011).

Currently, Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is a visiting researcher in Regensburg. During her stay, she will be based at IOS and collaborating closely with Guido Hausmann and other colleagues across the ScienceCampus. She will also host an open meet and greet session on 24 October at 16:15 at IOS outlining the work of the CIUS.