ÌÇÐÄVlog

In early March 2022, loosely affiliated researchers from Ukraine, Poland, Luxembourg and the UK discussed the possibility of ethically well-grounded and methodologically reasonable emergency collecting and archiving of oral testimonies of Ukrainian refugees, IDs, and volunteers. These discussions resulted in documenting the wartime and refugee fate of Ukrainians in Ukraine, Poland, and Luxembourg. As an ad hoc initiative, we were able to prepare neither detailed research questions, nor a digital archiving infrastructure. We want to move from spontaneous data collection to well-structured empirical research. U-CORE researches the heuristic gesture of collecting, preserving, analysing and disclosing testimonies of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The project includes researchers from Luxembourg, Poland and Ukraine. Digital Humanities are a rapidly growing field of research predominantly occupied with the development and application of new methodologies and tools. The reflection about their influence on knowledge production is often lacking. Building the digital environment for U-CORE is perceived and documented as a way of knowing. U-CORE optimises standards for metadata, data modeling, transcription, indexing and disclosure through artistic and digital storytelling in cooperation with interviewees and/or interviewers by means of a collaborative approach, and publishes reflections about the human intervention with available software for the conditions of knowledge production. An innovative feature of this project is that during a first phase of follow up interviewing interviewees are shown how their born-digitally interview has been processed in the digital database and are asked for their reaction on the basis of a newly composed questionnaire with semi-open questions, which informs the further decision making process of iterative data modelling. The main research question is: How to build a methodological and ethical toolbox, as well as a digital environment for processing, analysing, preserving, and accessing in two stages conducted born-digital testimonies of the war by means of a digital hermeneutics of practice consisting of (digital) source criticism, tool criticism and visualisation criticism?