KSU faculty members shared their experience documenting the occupation of Kherson
August 19, representatives of Kherson State University participated in the literary-bibliographic study «In the dimension of book and memory», organized by the Communal Institution "Kherson Regional Universal Scientific Library named after Oles Honchar".
KSU lecturers – Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Oleksandr Cheremisin and Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor Halyna Mykhailenko – delivered a presentation.
The lecturers shared their own experience in documenting the occupation of Kherson based on an oral history approach and presented the methodological principles that defined the work on recording the personal testimonies of Kherson residents.
«In our presentation, we focused on the experience of creating the books «Chronicle of Civil Resistance in Kherson in 2022» and «Kherson 2022: with Ukraine in the heart», considering them as the result of purposeful work to preserve the human dimension of the occupation. The basis of the documentation was semi-structured interviews, focused on the respondent's personal experience. Therefore, each testimony preserved the individual logic, linguistic style, and peculiarities of human memory», – noted Oleksandr Cheremisin.
Particular attention during the meeting was paid to the psychological dimension of the occupation experience.
«Oral testimonies showed that the occupation changed the perception of time, space, security, human relationships, and the future. That is why our documentation is aimed at highlighting the question: «what the occupation did to a person and how a person tried to preserve themselves in the conditions of full-scale war», – says Oleksandr Cheremisin.
KSU Press Center