Sensitive information in war documentation and emergency research

Warsaw, 23.04.2025, 18.30 CEST, zoom

Sensitive information in war documentation and emergency research

„Testimonies from the War” Research Seminars Series

!!! Please note the revised time of the seminar: exceptionally, we are meeting at 18.30 !!!

Sensitive information is an issue that must be addressed at some point in any research dealing with war, occupation, displacement, and generally any violent crisis. However, researchers may understand sensitive information differently from their respondents, while legal frameworks may impose further definitions that complicate the situation. In this seminar, we will try to capture the many dilemmas that arise in emergency research, using examples from the “Testimonies from the War” project, which has been recording the Ukrainian experience of the Russian full-scale war since 2022. Our speakers, representatives of the Luxembourgish and Ukrainian teams, will bring their perspectives resulting from their positionality and role in the project.

Valentyna Shevchenko is Candidate of History, equivalent of PhD (2009). Historian, researcher, and administrator of databases in the documentation projects at the Center for Urban History; senior research fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the NAS of Ukraine. Areas of academic interests: testimonies from the Russian-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian context of the First World War, historical urban planning, socio-economic history of Ukraine of the 19th and early 20th century. In the “Testimonies from the War” project Valentyna conducts interviews and is responsible for archiving of the Ukrainian part of the collection.

Machteld Venken is a Professor of Contemporary Transnational History and Head of the research unit on Contemporary History of Luxembourg at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). She studied Slavic Languages and Cultures, European Studies and History in Belgium, Poland and Ukraine. Venken earned her PhD in 2008 at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and her habilitation in 2018 at the University of Vienna (Austria). She has been a Principal Investigator of eight research projects funded in four European countries. Venken joined the University of Luxembourg in November 2019 after a Visiting Scholarship at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg / Institute of Advanced Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany) and an Attract Brains for Brussels Fellowship at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Belgium). Her main research interests are transnational, transregional and comparative histories of Europe, migration, borderlands, oral history, the history of families and children, and citizen science. She is a leader of the Luxembourgish team.

Chair: Anna Wylegała, leader if the “Testimonies from the War” project in Poland.

The seminar will be conducted in English and Ukrainian

Please register at: publicrelations@ifispan.edu.pl. You will receive the link to the zoom meeting upon registration.