GRANTEE
My project aims to create an archive of oral testimonies about the history of the mining town of Vuhledar in the Donbas region. As a result of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the entirety of the town’s housing was severely damaged, leading the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants to become internally displaced persons. Even though the town is still under Ukrainian control, the future of Vuhledar as an inhabited locality is uncertain. What could already be saved now, however, is an important part of the town’s history—the history as it was lived and lost by its residents. To realize this, I plan to conduct in-depth interviews with 15 to 20 (ex-)inhabitants of Vuhledar. Besides reconstructing important aspects of the town’s history starting from the 1960s, the interviews will document how the loss of the hometown was experienced by its inhabitants and ask about the hopes for the future of the ravaged town and its residents, now scattered all over Ukraine.