Heritage Under Attack: Uniting Expertise to Document War Experiences and Preserve Built Heritage

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We are delighted to invite you to the public discussion “Heritage Under Attack: Uniting Expertise to Document War Experiences and Preserve Built Heritage” at the Kharkiv School of Architecture.

Documenting heritage during the war in Ukraine is a critically important endeavor to preserve the country’s cultural memory and identity. The number of projects dedicated to documenting both tangible and intangible heritage in Ukraine is rising, involving national institutions, local organizations, volunteer initiatives, and international foundations.

Is it sufficient to document wartime experiences and endangered sites? What should be considered when recording losses to ensure the work of numerous organizations serves not only as evidence of destruction but also as a resource for post-war rehabilitation of material heritage and overcoming the communities’ traumatic war experiences? What priorities should be set?

This discussion will bring together experts from diverse fields within the humanities working with Ukrainian heritage during wartime. We will address the role of institutions and civil society initiatives in documenting and preserving heritage, the importance of international institutions and foundations in supporting preservation and protection work, and the need to capture human experiences alongside the documentation of damaged buildings and monuments. An essential point for collective reflection will be the integration of tangible and intangible aspects of war-related destruction in documentation, to foster a comprehensive vision for post-war heritage recovery.

When?  Thursday, November 28
18:30-20:00
Where? Lviv, Kubiyovycha St. 35a

Registration link

Speakers:

• Dr. Sasha Dovzhyk, Program Director, INDEX.
• Prof. Oleh Rybchynsky, Associate Professor of Architecture and Restoration, Lviv Polytechnic National University.
• Taras Nazaruk, Head of Digital History, researcher at the Center for Urban History, PhD candidate at FernUniversität in Hagen.
• Vasyl Rozhko, Co-founder of the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative  (HERI), founder of the Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab (HeMo), co-founder of the Agency for Cultural Resilience, and Chair of the NGO Tustan.

Moderator: Dr. Iryna Matsevko, historian, Vice- Chancellor, Kharkiv School of Architecture

This event is held within the framework of the project “Architectural Heritage Preservation in  War Times: The Ukrainian Model,” a collaboration between the Heritage Management Organization, the Kharkiv School of Architecture, and Skeiron, supported by the Public Diplomacy Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.