Conversations with Those Who Ask About War

How can good practices be developed for collecting, preserving, and publishing eyewitness accounts of a war that is still ongoing? The contributions offer insights into specifics of interviewing witnesses of the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Each chapter introduces researchers and practitioners who began documenting the war while living through it, driven by a desire for justice, preservation of memory, and community building. As a dialogic and multifaceted volume, it welcomes collaborative thinking and serves as a methodological guide and a space for frankness and sensitivity, capturing the academic community’s response to the challenges posed by extraordinary circumstances and existential threats.

Natalia Otrishchenko, born in 1989, works as a researcher and sociologist at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv. In 2022-23, she was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University. She leads the Ukrainian team in the international documentation initiative “24.02.22, 5 am: Testimonies from the War”. Her research focuses on qualitative research methods, oral history, urban sociology, and sociology of expertise.