INDEX is delighted to welcome our first cohort of the joint INDEX-IWM Fellows, who start their work in Lviv this autumn. They are researchers, artists, and journalists from Ukraine and abroad who will work together on the INDEX premises on their individual projects. This programme aims at fostering new connections and engaging with the public through the tailored programme of events and activities.
With this initial set of Fellowships, INDEX supports intellectuals and cultural practitioners who remain in Ukraine, document Russia’s war against Ukraine, and ensure the thriving of thought and action in the country at this precarious time. Moreover, INDEX engages international scholars and journalists whose work will be enriched by exposure to Ukrainian contexts and access to local sources.
Johana Kotišová, PhD
1 September – 30 September 2024
Project: Journalists vs. Impunity: Epistemological practices and challenges of media professionals investigating war crimes
Johana Kotišová is a media researcher, educator, and author born in the Czech Republic and currently based in Brussels. Her research and teaching interests include conflict and crisis reporting and documentation, media professionals’ emotional labour and mental well-being, transnational media collaborations, media oligarchisation, and cultural journalism. Her INDEX project seeks to understand how journalists working on war crimes investigations operate simultaneously in the court of public opinion and the courts of law, and what questions and challenges they face.
Artem Kharchenko, PhD
4 September 2024 – 4 December 2024
Project: Children in the orphanages of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s-1930s
Artem Kharchenko is an associate professor at the Department of Art Education and Humanities at the I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National University of Arts, where he is working on the monograph "The Jewish Community in the Space of the Imperial City, 1859-1923". From 2019 to 2023, he was a lecturer on Holocaust history at the university's Claims Conference partnership programme. He is a co-founder of the NGO Center for Interethnic Relations Research in Eastern Europe. At INDEX, Artem will develop a new project on the agency of parentless children in Soviet Ukraine.
Bohdan Bunchak
4 September – 4 December 2024
Project: Who’s here, who’s there?
Bohdan Bunchak is a Ukrainian artist and veteran of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Bohdan studied at the Department of Fine Arts at the Borys Hrinchenko Kyiv University and the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. He fought in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and was dismissed from service after being wounded. Currently, Bohdan is a curator of the “Vilno” programme of adaptation and reintegration for veterans and also a student at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy. During his Fellowship at INDEX, Bunchak will explore through his artistic practice the meanings of ‘civilian life’ for the growing numbers of Ukrainians with battleground experience. In addition to his art practice which involves word, image, and sound, Bunchak will help INDEX build a partnership with the ‘Vilno’ programme.
Kristina Hook, PhD
4 September – 4 November
Project: Genocide, Memory, Identity: Holodomor Narratives during Russia's Full-Scale War against Ukraine
Kristina Hook is an anthropologist and scholar-practitioner specialising in genocides and mass atrocities, Ukrainian identity, and Ukraine-Russia relations, past and present. Her research contextualises the 1932-1933 Holodomor’s generational impact and memory in modern Ukraine, including the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war (2014-present). Drawing from multi-year ethnographic fieldwork since 2015, interviewing across 33 locations in Ukraine, and archival work, she is writing a book that explores the events of the Holodomor from the anthropological perspective and its central importance to questions of Ukrainian national identity, memory, and solidarity.
Natalie Nougayrède
4 September 2024 – 4 December 2024
Project: Storytelling and sharing the experiences of war
Natalie Nougayrède is a French journalist, former editor-in-chief of Le Monde and member of The Guardian's editorial board from 2015 to 2020. She was awarded the Albert Londres Journalism Prize for her coverage of Russia’s aggression against Ichkeria. She serves on the board of the Primo Levi Centre in Paris, an NGO which helps refugees who have been victims of torture and political violence. Furthermore, she is a member of the Körber Foundation's History Forum and the ECFR Council. Natalie Nougayrède is currently involved in mentoring civil society initiatives and media projects in the Eastern Partnership region. Her project as a Fellow at INDEX and a Research Resident for the Center for Urban History* will centre on contributing to the Histories of War book series.
*The Center for Urban History offers residence programmes and hosts research fellows and student interns for establishing and continuing communication across different disciplines, geographies and stages. The Center's Residence Program is designed to encourage, promote, and support research and reflections on urban history and urban experiences in Eastern and Central Europe.
ariel rosé
4 October – 4 December 2024
Project: What is a language?
ariel rosé are a poet, essayist, and illustrator originally from Poland, a resident of Norway, based in Berlin. They are the author and illustrator of the books morze nocą jest mięśniem serca (the sea by night is a muscle of the heart, PIW, 2022) and Północ. Przypowieści (North: Parables, Znak, 2019), which had its launch at the Miłosz Festival (both published under the name Alicja Rosé). Their writing has appeared in leading European publications like Revue Esprit, BLA, Czas Literatury, Gazeta Wyborcza, Mellom, Ny Tid, Pismo, Samtiden, Vinduet and Zeszyty Literackie. Their project at INDEX will explore the broad and deep picture of the language problem today in Ukraine, and some ideas for its solution shared by Ukrainian poets themselves. ariel rosé write in the form of essays framed into their travels and references to various world poets, thinkers and writers who struggled with language.
Karolina Uskakovych
4 November – 4 December
Project: The White Cliffs of Vinnytsia
Karolina Uskakovych is a Ukrainian designer, artist, and photographer. She is a co-founder of the Uzvar Collective and Art Director for the magazine Anthroposphere: The Oxford Climate Review. She is also artist-in-residence with the Digital Ecologies research group and one of the founding members of the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network. At INDEX, Karolina will research the cultural appearances of the toxic phosphogypsum stack left at the site of the bankrupt Vinnytsia Chemical Plant. During her INDEX Fellowship, she will delve deeper into the project, developing it into a publication and/or film that explores the biodiversity of post-industrial urban ecosystems.
Please follow INDEX on social media channels, where forthcoming Open calls for Fellows will be published.
