LivArch Fellowship in Digital Humanities

Russia's war against Ukraine can be seen as the most well-documented violent conflict in history. Future historical research will rely heavily on the vast array of digital-born sources created and collected, primarily through grassroots efforts. These may include, to mention but a few, diverse resources such as social media posts, videos, photographs, oral history testimonies, etc. 

The task of LivArch fellowship in digital humanities is interconnecting emergency documentation and real-time archived content ("living archives") and making them accessible for research, law, and society requires conceptual, legal, and ethical considerations as well as a technical framework, ideally adhering to metadata standards, guidelines, and considerations for data sensitivity and sustainable archiving practices in compliance with FAIR and CARE principles.

We are expecting a fellow to work on data management infrastructure for the LivArch consortium collections and enable open-source solutions to multiply on other documenting projects in the field. We are looking for a fellow whose field of expertise includes:

• Developing solutions for long-term digital preservation of materials collected after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine
• Managing a sustainable and secure digital infrastructure for the preservation of diverse formats of materials
• Knowledge of key operations for digital archives, including ingest, preservation, and access
• Knowledge of current standards, best practices, and principles in the field of digital asset management
• Familiarity with current technologies and software used in digital archive environments
• Ability to learn new technical skills and analyze available solutions.

The LivArch project offers a 1000 EUR monthly fellowship for up to 24 months and affiliation with the Center for Urban History in Lviv. The fellowship allows part-time involvement, and remote cooperation is negotiable. Last year, graduate students, young career scholars, and practitioners are welcome to apply. 

The application must include:

• CV;
• a motivation letter in Ukrainian or English, indicating previous experience and plans for the fellowship (up to 1800 characters).

Please send your applications to grants@lvivcenter.org, with "Longterm LivArch Fellowship" in the subject line. Application deadline: April 28, 2025.

The "Documenting Russia's War against Ukraine" (LivArch) project aims to advance methods and theories for collecting, preserving, and enriching these sources while addressing complex ethical issues surrounding responsible representation, publication, reuse, and long-term archiving. Its primary focus is empowering projects and individuals who create and curate such sources. The project fosters equitable collaboration across national borders, disciplinary boundaries, traditional research, and participatory approaches through scholarships and exchange formats.

LivArch is a joint project involving the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz, the Center for Urban History, Lviv, the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Marburg Center for Digital Culture and Infrastructure (MCDCI), University of Marburg and the Justus Liebig University Giessen.