PUBLIC INTEREST JOURNALISM LAB
Our mission is to document the modern history of Ukraine against the backdrop of the Russian-Ukrainian war so that future generations and the world can better understand these events
The Public Interest Journalism Lab team together with media partners – Ukrainian national and regional mass media – creates documentary and publicist materials compiling a modern chronicle of Ukraine’s history after February 24, 2022. These materials can be found on lifeinwar.com
For the Lab's team, for me personally, it is important to cover events here and now. However, during the second month of the war, I realized that we could lose history. For example, in March, when we were working in Mykolaiv, we could not fully understand what was happening in Chernihiv. When we were documenting stories in Kharkiv, we could not keep up with the events in Berdyansk. The idea of the project in this format was proposed by historian Timothy Snyder. It's a format that gives an opportunity to understand the historical importance of the journalists' work.
This project brings together journalistic materials that are verified and, in our opinion, have historical value so due to them in 5-10 years every researcher can understand what happened in Sarny or how people experienced the occupation in Borodyanka
Nataliya Gumenyuk
Founder and CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab and head of the "Life of War" project
Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression, the life of every Ukrainian family, every Ukrainian company and city has changed. Every day the war takes the lives of Ukrainian defenders, tortures and kills civilians. Cultural heritage is being destroyed, some Ukrainian cities have been turned into ruins, millions of Ukrainians have left their homes in search of shelter, and tens of thousands of them have no place to return to. The Ukrainian state, the international community, human rights defenders and journalists are documenting all these war crimes of the Russian militaries in order to bring the aggressor to justice.
But despite the pain and losses, the citizens of Ukraine resist – at the frontline and in the back – and undeniably believe in their victory. People in live create new families, and even in bomb shelters little Ukrainians are born. Life returns to the liberated cities; communities are united by mutual aid; volunteers, as a blood-bearing system, supply the essentials to all parts of the country; families who have been forced out of their homes by the war find the strength to start everything again in a new place.
This is what ‘Life in War’ about. And Life always wins!
The project was born in the team of the Public Interest Journalism Lab in cooperation and with the support of the Institute for Human Sciences (Austria), the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Renaissance Foundation.
Cooperation between PIJL and the IWM on Life in War falls within the overarching framework of the IWM’s Documenting Ukraine project. This project, launched in Spring 2022, supports professionals based in Ukraine as they work on documentation projects that establish and preserve a factual record of the Russo-Ukrainian War or bring meaning to events through artistic interpretation and intellectual reflection.