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Trust, archives, and history. The IEG LivArch Workshop on documenting the ongoing war in Ukraine

by Ian Marino, Thorsten Wübbena1

During the last two days of January 2025, the IEG had the pleasure of holding an online workshop in the context of the joint project “LivArch – Documenting Russia’s war against Ukraine: The challenges of living archives for historical knowledge production”. This project, which was featured on this very blog post a few months ago, focuses on the challenges posed by Russia’s war against Ukraine, where historical records are increasingly created through digital means such as social media, mobile devices, and digital repositories. Many actors are working day and night to collect, preserve, and display records regarding this sensitive event. The workshop included the participation of many individuals who are directly involved in institutions documenting aspects of life in Ukraine during the war, as well as scholars diligently trying to understand how this archival phenomenon impacts research within the discipline of history and beyond. The aim of this blog post is to report on the workshop and share the findings and insights.

Although it is tempting for us to use this space to recap the event just like sports commentators do after witnessing a performance full of highlights, this is not our intention here. Rather, in the following lines, we will explore an element that, from our position as active observers of the event, intercrossed the various moments, talks, questions, and debates within the workshop. This key element is composed of one word only, with meanings that can go in many directions, as we will discuss next: trust.

“We trust if we feel safe”

Much has already been written about the concept of trust in sociological, political or historical contexts in the past, and anyone wishing to delve deeper into this topic we gladly refer to some of the scholars that have been reflecting on such a notion within these various fields.2 We are not interested in delving deeper into these discussions here or even expanding on them; the term ‘trust’ simply serves as a ‘common thread’ here and so we would rather allude to the specific meanings that we can derive from the term itself.

When discussing the possibilities for applying AI to digital archives, scholars Lise Jaillant and Arran Rees proposed that one key challenge of this relationship relates to trust. According to them, the novelty and uncertainty surrounding the engines that run AI tools may cause a lack of trust among archivists and archival users. Although we won’t delve into this specific problem, the general explanation of why trust matters, as presented by the authors, is useful for our purpose in the essay: “We trust if we feel safe,” they say, and “we lack trust in a situation that seems risky and unsafe”.3

As we mentioned, the word trust was brought up many times during the workshop. Yet, the senses in which it was used varied, creating a multiplicity of meanings surrounding one word and the general feelings of being “safe” and “unsafe.” Such complexity might be precisely what makes it a valuable entry point for discussing the workshop (and the entire LivArch project ecosystem to some extent). To better organize our ideas, however, we will discuss three senses of trust that we observed during the event.

Trust in international collaboration amid a sensitive event

It is not a proper novelty to say that the configurations for collaborative work in academia are in a constant process of globalization, often including research groups formed by scholars from different parts of the world and, not rarely, with different disciplinary backgrounds. The situation within LivArch and in our workshop is an example of this configuration. However, there is a particularity in our case: although we indeed have scholars from different parts of the world, the topic that unites us is a very sensitive event, to say the least, which involves one country, Ukraine, as a protagonist of a military invasion by a foreign actor, Russia. Such a configuration is not meaningless in any sense, and it should encourage us to constantly reflect on the impacts it has on our collaborations. Thankfully, such an important reflection was part of our workshop, in the talk by Miglė Bareikytė (European University Viadrina), for instance. Are there challenges for Ukrainian scholars in being involved in international networks? Are there advantages for scholars studying a war scenario from a country that is far from the battlefield? Are there layers of inequality when it comes to the possibilities and limitations of researchers in different contexts regarding a common research topic, even if they are theoretically working collaboratively? Although we do not intend to offer definitive answers to these questions, it seems important to reflect on them. In doing so, it appears that the prospective answer to all these questions is yes. Scholars working in institutions and countries with more stable infrastructures and research funding certainly can find easier ways to work compared to the unstable conditions of a country currently facing an invasion by a foreign army. Proximity to richer research centers, English-speaking environments, connections to editorial standards of what are considered good publishers or academic journals, and the mere ability to travel also pose advantages for people studying sensitive events without being physically immersed in the destructive elements of such an event. As critics linked to post-colonial and decolonial thought have been saying since the mid-20th century, there is a global inequality in knowledge production, which can be further exacerbated when it comes to controlling research data regarding situations marked by specific or sustained precarity.4

We do not intend to categorize the Ukrainian situation into preformatted labels, of course, but the mere fact that only an online format was possible for our workshop, due to the inability of some of our partners to leave Ukraine because of martial law is a testament that we should reflect on such questions. Happily, Bareikytė herself offered a way to engage with these questions during her talk: trust. The only way that scholars can cooperate and collaborate in a fair sense when addressing the challenges posed by the present situation is by creating bonds of mutual trust: trust that all researchers involved are consistently committed to self-reflection, engaged in putting themselves in the place of others at all stages of the research; trust that there will be a collective commitment to ethical standards regarding research data, publications, and transparency in planning and producing research outcomes; trust that we need to be empathetic towards each other without falling into dynamics of superficial sorrow or heroic voluntarism, thus not confining anyone to labels or subaltern positions of speech; and, finally, trust that we can develop an understanding that although we share a common research topic and concern, the stakes for those actually living in the context of the war are incomparably higher than for those outside of it.

Trust in collecting and sharing testimony

Beyond the need for trust in our day-to-day life as researchers working collaboratively to address the challenges of digital archiving in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it was noticeable during the workshop that there is another dimension to this same word. In this case, it related to the creation of the archives themselves. The war situation is undoubtedly marked by traumatic experiences. For those considering sharing their stories with individuals creating archives about the war, establishing a sense of trust between interviewer and interviewee is of great importance. This point was emphasized in the presentations by Natalia Otrishchenko (Lviv Center for Urban History). She is one of the leaders of the project “24.02.2022 – Testimonies from the War,” and she could attest from her experience in collecting oral histories from Ukrainians in the country and migrants how important it is to shape this sense of trust. Svitlana Osipchuk, who leads the “War Childhood Museum”, also contributed her thoughts on working sensitively with stories from children living in such violent times. She emphasized the importance of the children and their families having trust in the ethical approach taken and cultivated by the creators of the archives.

Both cases illustrate the very human and sensitive aspects that characterize the process of creating archives in the context of war. This consideration enriches our debate, which often leans toward technical discussions about digital preservation and data management strategies, revealing a non-digital aspect of digital archives. The presentation by Mills Kelly (George Mason University) on the historical perspective of archiving catastrophic events in real time using digital technologies strengthens this viewpoint, especially when he recalls the challenges he and his colleagues faced while building the “Hurricane Digital Memory Bank” in the aftermath of the destruction caused by hurricanes in the Southeastern United States in 2005. Recognizing the need to create such bonds of trust when dealing with populations affected by traumatic events is crucial and brings important reflections on the matters of community and grassroots archives to the table.5

During the workshop, we were also able to hear from speakers who, after taking such concerns into consideration, shared their efforts in shaping digital methodologies that could enhance and empower the communities, thereby working to foster such a sense of trust. That was the case of the uses of AI to address heritage issues, as presented by Tugce Karatas (Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History – C²DH), who is exploring the potential of new tools for cultivating the protagonists of Ukrainian communities. Additionally, the pursuit of developing trust between archive creators and contributors has inspired Machteld Venken (Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History – C²DH), who shared her intentions to shape methodologies and workflows for metadata designation that actively involve individuals providing testimonies to the “U-CORE” project.

Trust in archival materials

As studies have shown so far, the context of the war in Ukraine is marked by the spread of fake news and misinformation. Invariably, such a situation, which certainly extends to many other situations worldwide, leads to a general sense of the opposite of the word that we’ve been reflecting on so far: untrust. Nevertheless, exactly because of this, part of the motivation to create archives involves fighting for the truth, documenting what the projects view as trustworthy aspects of the war. This motivation can be seen clearly in the presentation by Taras Nazaruk (Lviv Center for Urban History), who discussed the work being done by the project “Most Documented War”, which has been monitoring more than 90 projects currently working to archive the war. Most of these projects align with a common sense of fighting for trustworthy documentation. The “Ukraine War Archive” is one of those, presented by its co-founder Maksym Demydenko, who expressed all the background work that has been done to, for example, collect more than 2,000 testimonies about the war. Nataliia Gladkova’s presentation about the project “Ukrainian Archive” also highlighted the role of non-profit organizations in dealing with sensitive content aiming for citizen commitment to trustworthy information. Moreover, both projects express a sense that their archives can turn into key elements for providing trustworthy evidence for filing accusations of violations of human rights and war crimes.

As Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute) commented during our debate, historically, there is a level of legal and epistemic legitimacy for actors and institutions dealing with serious accusations such as war crimes, as well as managing evidence. Nevertheless, apparently state institutions are lagging in managing such data, and the archive creators who were among us during the workshop seem to be leading the way in terms of dealing with such materials. In a way, this shift prompts us to reflect on the social contracts we currently uphold, questioning how to rebalance (if necessary) our level of trust in actors who, as part of our legal arrangements, are usually not involved when it comes to handling what we can call “evidence”. Such reflections are important because they allow for a broader examination of the role of NGOs and other non-profit organizations in contexts of managing documentation and publicly meaningful heritage within events such as wars and humanitarian crises. In other words, we might need to stop and reflect as a society on how to shape our idea of trust amid the multiple transformations and new actors that populate today’s archival landscape.

Another development stemming from the empowered action of manipulating the notions of evidence and trust in these projects currently archiving the war is the epistemic concern of historians (and scholars in general) regarding the reliability of these materials as credible sources for research. This concern emerged in Haslinger’s earlier question, but it was also raised by other participants, who inquired about the relationship between the projects and “traditional archives”. The discipline of history has developed alongside formal archives, and since the 19th century, social acceptance or trust in our discipline has been intertwined with the belief that formal archives are committed to authenticity and minimal clarity regarding document provenance.6 What is the impact of the current state of archiving on history if the majority of future sources for writing the history of the war in Ukraine are being handled by non-traditional archival actors? Will we see an epistemic crisis, with more “traditional historians” promptly refusing to trust such sources? Will historians build bonds of trust with these archivist-activists? If so, what will this mean for history in terms of research practice and even for teaching future historians in undergraduate courses? Perhaps it is worth writing these questions down, even if we cannot properly answer them right now…

Final remarks

In the beginning of this essay, we discussed the notion of trust as related to the necessity of feeling “safe”. In a way, such a metaphor can be perceived in all three senses of trust that we explored in the text, all of which come from observations from the LivArch Workshop held at the IEG at the end of January 2025. Firstly, we discussed that scholars need to create safe environments for working collaboratively in situations marked by their opposite, the unsafe. Trust as a working dynamic commitment, in this sense, is a necessary agreement in the context of studying aspects of an ongoing war, as its violence goes beyond the immediate battlefield, including inequalities in the production of knowledge. Secondly, people willing to share aspects of their lives during such sensitive events also need to feel safe in order to actually share what they witnessed. Cultivating trustworthy relationships, therefore, is also fundamental for archive creators dealing with traumatic situations such as the one we unfortunately perceive in Ukraine right now. Thirdly, we discussed how much of the activism and motivation of archive creators who deeply want to trust in their projects comes from a reality of people who, amid the spread of fake news and misinformation regarding events of violence and possible war crimes, want to create a safe environment for information, understanding, and ultimately, justice. Such a shift in managing documentation that embodies the notions of trust and evidence, however, pushes us to reflect on our own standards of trust in our legal and institutional systems, as we discussed, because now we witness new actors becoming protagonists in dealing with matters that not long ago were restricted to State agencies. Finally, another implication of this is that historians, who also need to feel safe in their trust in the archive, need to reflect on what such a shift will mean for their own standards of trust and their long-standing, intertwined relationship with archives.

Although we could perceive all of this by observing our workshop and reflecting on our current experience as members of the LivArch project, we have more questions than answers to conclude this essay. How exactly can we achieve the aforementioned commitments of trust for working collaboratively on a topic that involves so many layers of differentiation and inequality? What are the limits of sharing that the trust bonds between a scholar and someone sharing their testimony about a traumatic event allow us to explore? How can we make sense of a dispersed and decentralized agency when it comes to defining what is evidence and what is trustworthy information? What will become of history as a discipline amidst so many transformations in the current forms of archiving? As we have already stated, we cannot offer definitive answers to such issues in this short essay. However, we would like to express that we trust the readers to help us in the collective effort of thinking about how to answer such challenging questions.

Literature

  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); “Addressing Digital Colonialism: A Path to Equitable Data Governance | UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab,” accessed February 16, 2025, https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/analytics/addressing-digital-colonialism-path-equitable-data-governance.
  • Cvetkovich, Ann: An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
  • Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison: Objectivity. New York  2007
  • Forst, Rainer: “The Justification of Trust in Conflict. Conceptual and Normative Groundwork”, ConTrust Working Paper, No. 2, Frankfurt am Main: ConTrust – Trust in Conflict, 2022. contrust.uni-frankfurt.de/wp-2.
  • Frevert, Ute: Vertrauensfragen: Eine Obsession der Moderne. München 2013
  • Jaillant, Lise and Arran Rees: “Applying AI to Digital Archives: Trust, Collaboration and Shared Professional Ethics,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38, no. 2 (June 1, 2023): 572, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqac073.
  • Luhmann, Niklas: Vertrauen: Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer  Komplexität. Stuttgart 2014
  • Paul, Herman: “A Collapse of Trust: Reconceptualizing the Crisis of Historicism.” Journal of the Philosophy of History 2, no. 1 (January 1, 2008): 63–82.
  • Wimmer, Mario: “The Present as Future Past: Anonymous History of Historical Times,” Storia Della Storiografia 68, no. 2 (2015): 165–83, https://doi.org/10.1400/240647.

 

Featured Image: Alexandra Alexandrowna Exter, Satanic Ballet, 1922, public domain


Cite this article as: Ian Marino and Thorsten Wübbena: Trust, archives, and history. The IEG LivArch Workshop on documenting the ongoing war in Ukraine. DH Lab (Blog)., https://doi.org/10.58079/13ed8

  1. According to the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), the shares in this contribution are as follows: Ian Marino (Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing), Thorsten Wübbena (Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing). []
  2. Frevert, Ute. Vertrauensfragen: Eine Obsession der Moderne. München, 2013; Luhmann, Niklas. Vertrauen: Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität. Stuttgart 2014; Forst, Rainer. “The Justification of Trust in Conflict.” ConTrust – Trust in Conflic 10, no. 2, 2022; Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York  2007; Paul, Herman. “A Collapse of Trust: Reconceptualizing the Crisis of Historicism.” Journal of the Philosophy of History 2, no. 1 (January 1, 2008): 63–82. []
  3. Lise Jaillant and Arran Rees, “Applying AI to Digital Archives: Trust, Collaboration and Shared Professional Ethics,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38, no. 2 (June 1, 2023): 572, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqac073. []
  4. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); “Addressing Digital Colonialism: A Path to Equitable Data Governance | UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab,” accessed February 16, 2025, https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/analytics/addressing-digital-colonialism-path-equitable-data-governance. []
  5. Ann Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). []
  6. Mario Wimmer, “The Present as Future Past: Anonymous History of Historical Times,” Storia Della Storiografia 68, no. 2 (2015): 165–83, https://doi.org/10.1400/240647. []

OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
DH Lab (28. Februar 2025). Trust, archives, and history. The IEG LivArch Workshop on documenting the ongoing war in Ukraine. DH Lab. Abgerufen am 26. März 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/13ed8


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