From August 27 to 30, 2024, the next International Summer Institute “Testimony of the War in Ukraine” (WWSI) will be held in Wroclaw, Poland.
The Institute was launched in response to the Russian military aggression against Ukraine by several partner institutions in July 2022. The organizers of the Summer Institute offered an academic platform for a thoughtful and focused discussion of the needs and challenges of field research and interviewing in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. A second Institute was held in June 2023, which aimed to formulate key conceptual questions regarding the practice and ethics of wartime research, as well as to create a new transnational research network that would unite researchers, activists, and creative individuals involved in collecting wartime testimonies.
This year Summer Institute focuses on testimony research in the pursuit of justice, with an ambition to chart novel disciplinary approaches for oral history, memory studies and anthropology, while affording victims of the war a space of trust, empowerment and dignity. During WWSI 2024 participants will join to study, contextualize and interrogate injustice as it has been witnessed, observed and experienced, from a variety of conceptual and disciplinary perspectives, across diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural groups of Ukraine. Testimonies provided by eyewitnesses play a pivotal role in uncovering crimes, establishing culpability of war criminals, and securing redress for victims. The first-hand testimonies serve not only as crucial components in legal proceedings but also as a solid basis for upholding human rights and international law during armed conflicts. Moreover, such juridical work with witnesses lays the groundwork for restoring trust in the legal system and fostering peace in post-conflict societies.
The concept of genocide is of special interest within the framework of WWSI 2024. Since 2014 the rhetoric of genocide has been tested to provide a juridical qualification of the crimes of the Russian Federation committed in Ukraine. We will discuss existing scholarly approaches and gauge the possibility of qualifying assaults against one’s life, one’s group identity, one’s cultural heritage and one’s natural habitat as crimes of genocide in a comparative perspective. Another focus of WWSI 2024 is proposed to be on experiences of occupation and pursuit of justice in the formerly occupied territories.
Over the course of four days, the institute will offer a series of presentations, workshops, and mentorship opportunities examining current trends in scholarly and creative reflections on witnessing the war in Ukraine. Invited speakers and faculty will lead such discussions and invited participants will be offered opportunities to discuss their work with other members of the Institute.
The WWSI 2024 Summer Institute program can be found here.