Launch of the Luxembourgish U-CORE Interview Collection

The U-CORE (öffnet externen Link) project (Researching the Collecting, Preserving, Analysing and Disclosing of Ukrainian Testimonies of the War) is launching its interview collection with Ukrainian refugees and displaced persons on May 13, 2026. Prof. Machteld Venken (öffnet externen Link) will open the event with a presentation of a new integral digital workflow for testimonies of persons at risk developed in Luxembourg within the U-CORE project. She will, among others, explain how that workflow was applied to nearly 100 recorded hours comprising 81 transcribed interviews with 52 narrators from Luxembourg. The access application for that collection will be introduced by its developer Dr Aliesia Soloviova.

Round Table

The second part of the event will feature a round table moderated by Dr Inna Ganschow. The discussion will address key questions concerning the hermeneutic approach in oral history research, the protection of interviewees’ identities in the digital era, and the sustainable archiving of recorded testimonies.

Invited speakers:

• Anna Cole (University of Portsmouth; projects in collaboration with the British Library)
• Simon Donig (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg; LivArch)
• Andreas Fickers (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History)
• Steven Naron (Yale Library, Director of the Fortunoff Video Archive)

The third part will feature interviewees from the Luxembourg Network of Ukrainian Researchers (LURN) who have contributed to the U-CORE collection. This part will be moderated by LURN co-founders Prof. Martin Düring and Dr Inna Ganschow, who will announce the closure of LURN, as its mission to establish connections between local and war-displaced Ukrainian scholars is considered accomplished.

Programme, May 13, 2026:

15.30: Collection and Access Application Presentation

16.00: Round Table

16.45: Closure of Luxembourg Ukrainian Researcher Network

17.00: Reception