Fellowships for scholars in Ukraine affected by the Russian invasion and war

The Center for Urban History announces the program of fellowships for scholars in Ukraine affected by the Russian invasion and war. The fellowships are supported by the Institute for Human Sciences / Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna),  Körber-Stiftung (Hamburg), and the University of Lund.

Fellowships in cooperation with the Institute for Human Sciences

The Center for Urban History (Lviv) and the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) are offering two joint fellowships dedicated to documenting Russia’s 2022 war against Ukraine.

It is vital to document the human experience of war amidst a deluge of information. This is a task of consciously and intentionally sifting through and parsing that information, especially online, but also creating new materials, for example in the form of oral testimony. Sustained attention and effort are required to capture narratives in real time as they emerge, evolve, and crystallize into collective memory; to preserve materials in a way that makes them useful in the long run; and to reflect on what should be made public, for what audience and purpose, and in what format.

These joint fellowships will enable two scholars to spend 6 months at the Center for Urban History in Lviv, working on a documentation project within the framework of the Center’s activities. The scholars selected will each receive a stipend of 1.300 EUR per month from the Institute for Human Sciences to cover living expenses.

Selection will be made by the joint decision of the Center for Urban History and the IWM.

Fellowships supported by Körber-Stiftung

The Center for Urban History (Lviv) in partnership with the Center for Contemporary History and Körber-Stiftung (Hamburg) are offering two joint fellowships dedicated to Diversifying and Decentralizing Eastern Europe.

It is vital to make the voices of Ukrainian researchers visible and heard in the debates about the past and present of Eastern Europe as a geographical and imagined space. The ongoing Russian war against Ukraine not only poses tremendous challenges to the Ukrainian people on the human level, but it also implies falsified and politically misused historical narratives aggressively brought forward against Ukraine in Russian foreign and domestic politics.

The aim of the two fellowships is to counter these narratives by creating materials on the multilayered history of Ukraine and its urban areas as an essential part of the Central and Eastern European space. Sustained attention and effort are required to analyze and identify relevant historical legacies (local or biographical) from Ukraine, to contextualize them with broader historical narratives about Eastern Europe and to develop and preserve materials in a way that makes them useful in the long run; additional effort is required to reflect on what should be made public, for what audience and purpose, and in what format.

This joint fellowship will enable two scholars to spend 3 months at the Center for Urban History in Lviv, working on a documentation project within the framework of the Center’s activities. On the basis of a mid-term review of the research projects done by the Center of Urban History in cooperation with the fellows, a one-time extension of the fellowships to 6 months is possible. The scholars selected will receive a stipend of 1.300 EUR per month from the Center of Urban History to cover living expenses.

Selection will be made by the joint decision of the Center for Urban History, Körber-Stiftung, and the Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg.

Fellowships in cooperation with the University of Lund

The Center for Urban History (Lviv) and the University of Lund (Lund) offer joint scholarships dedicated to documenting everyday life in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine in 2022.

Comprehension of the human dimension of war occurs in many planes and from different positions. Resorting to the experience of different professional groups allows you to see such nuances of the war period and cover such topics that remain unnoticed in the overall flow of media materials. The stories of people who, by virtue of their professional duties, are involved in the daily reflection on life in times of war, will become an invaluable source of information about the reformatting of professional knowledge and actualization of the experience of previous crisis situations and wars. To this end, it is important to collect the testimonies of special groups that are directly involved in crisis situations and document the daily life of several Western Ukrainian cities (Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, Chernivtsi). It is about domestic and foreign volunteers who provide humanitarian assistance, volunteers of civil defense, medics, and cultural workers who seek to protect cultural heritage sites, journalists, etc. There is also a collection of written testimonies, interviews and autoethnographic stories with university teachers and scientists located in Lviv.

This scholarship will allow the researcher to spend 5 months at the Center for Urban History in Lviv (with the possibility of remote work if necessary). The assignment involves collecting interviews and written testimonies. The selected researcher will receive a scholarship of €1,300 per month.

The selection will be carried out by joint decision of the Center for Urban History and the University of Lund.

ELIGIBILITY

We invite researchers who hold PhD or its equivalent or are completing a dissertation in history or another relevant discipline like sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology.  

TO APPLY

Applications have to include:

• CV
• brief project proposal (max. 1 page).

Please submit your application to the email [email protected]. Please indicate "Non-residential fellowship" in the subject line of your email.

Applications can be submitted in Ukrainian or English. Only fully completed applications will be accepted.

The application period is open immediately and applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis.  

The jury is not required to publicly justify its decisions, nor to provide applicants individual feedback on their applications.