Un/archiving Post/industry: Ethical Collaboration in Theory and in Practice

Annual Lecture of the Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy, in association with the DECOPE Project

In this presentation, we will discuss our experiences collaborating on the project “Un/archiving Post/industry,” a heritage preservation and public engagement initiative that resulted in the digitization and popular promotion of vulnerable industrial heritage collections from Ukraine’s East between 2019 and 2024. Dr Iryna Sklokina will talk about the practical challenges of, and strategies for, leading a project working with diverse kinds of heritage (tangible and intangible) in the context of de-industrialization, de-communization and military conflict. Professor Victoria Donovan will discuss the ethics of international collaboration and the ways that we can avoid extractivist or appropriative practice when working with vulnerable heritage in precarious times.  

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion about ethical collaboration, focusing on war and conflict contexts, led by Dr Diána Vonnák.

Chair: Siân Jones (University of Stirling).
Panelist: Diána Vonnák (University of Stirling)

Iryna Sklokina is a historian, a senior researcher at the Center for the Urban History of East-Central Europe, and a postdoctoral researcher at the European University Institute in Italy. Her research focuses on Soviet-era heritage, especially industrial heritage, commemoration and reuse practices. She recently co-edited a special issue of Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia titled Donbas Imaginaries: Heritage, Culture, Communities, and the book  Political Cult of the Dead in Ukraine. Traditions and Dimensions from the First World War till Today, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, with Guido Haussman. Her ongoing work investigates social provisions for working-class women in the Galician (Polish-Ukrainian) borderland. She took part in research and policy analysis project OpenHeritage focused on adaptive heritage reuse in the EU and beyond, and co-led Un/archiving Post/industry” project was awarded a European Heritage Award/EuropaNostra Award for Citizens’ Engagement and Awareness.

Victoria Donovan is an interdisciplinary researcher, whose current work focuses on the industrial history and heritage of the Ukrainian East, questions of heritage management and manipulation and the role of the industrial past in forming community identities and politics. She is Director of Impact and Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research and knowledge transfer work has been recognised with prestigious national prizes and grants, including an Arts and Humanities Leadership Fellowship, British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker award. In 2023, her work with partners in Ukraine on the “Un/archiving Post/industry” project was awarded a European Heritage Award/EuropaNostra Award for Citizens’ Engagement and Awareness. Her next monograph How to Live in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East. is forthcoming with Daunt Books Publishing in 2024.