Prisma Ukraïna – Research Network Eastern Europe is a research program at the Forum Transregionale Studien that opens up new regional and transregional perspectives on and from the east of Europe through the prism of Ukraine. Initiated in 2015 and directed by Andrii Portnov, Prisma Ukraïna provides scope for academic research, transregional exchange and communication through fellowships, workshops, panel discussions, seminars, lectures and science communication.
Prisma Ukraïna: War, Migration and Memory is an interdisciplinary research group of Ukrainian scholars in Ukraine and Germany that has been constituted in 2022. The research group is directed by Viktoria Sereda and investigates the transformational effects of war and dislocation on people’s memory, history, and sense of belonging.
Prisma Ukraïna – Research Network Eastern Europe has been realized with funding from the Land Berlin.
The remote/non-resident fellowships for participating scholars in Ukraine have been provided for by the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius and the Marga und Kurt Möllgard-Stiftung.
Editors: Jacqueline Wagner, Lidia Kuzemska, and Viktoria Sereda
By Denys Shatalov.
In this conversation, Denys Shatalov explores the question: What historiographical misunderstandings could the frontier theory reveal when applied to the study of the Ukrainian Cossacks as a border phenomenon?
By Anna Skiba. How do Ukrainian individuals and organisations in Germany and Norway negotiate what memory and identity to preserve, emphasise, or make visible under conditions of displacement? How does the historical memory context of the host country shapes what is available to them as they do so? The experiences of Ukrainian DPs in Flossenbürg offer an interesting point of comparison here, demonstrating how memory practices can generate agency and visibility amidst uncertainty and displacement.
Olha Haidamachuk in Conversation with Misсha Gabowitsch and Mykola Homanyuk. Conflicts of interpretation and the semiotic contradictions of the war monumentscapes in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories were recently explored by Misсha Gabowitsch and Mykola Homanyuk. In their book Monuments and Territory[1], focusing on memory study, they also raise issues of political and symbolic borders and, therefore, offer rich empirical and analytical materials for rethinking аpproaches to border study.
By Lidia Kuzemska. What are the challenges faced by forced migrants within and from Ukraine due to the Russian invasion? Ukrainians feel, live with, and live through uncertainties, whether emotionally, intellectually, or bodily. The new edited collection sheds light on the lives of displaced persons, which are divided, in terms of time, space, and social context, into a “before” and “after” the war. It analyses the uncertainties faced by war migrants and those who have decided to remain in Ukraine, as well as how people cope with these uncertainties in their daily lives.
By Laura Schmidt, Lisa Schmidt, and Sofie Leubert. On December 10, 2025, the geography course of the 11th grade at Walther-Rathenau-Gymnasium in Berlin, focusing on the central themes of home, integration, and inclusion, visited the nearby Forum Transregionale Studien for a workshop entitled “Debates over Cultural Phenomena.” The workshop was organized and led by the Ukrainian sociologists Viktoriya Sereda and Lidia Kuzemska and focused on the complexities of multicultural societies and the challenges they are facing today.
By Natalia Zaitseva. The motives of Ukrainian women for mobility and immobility, recorded several years after forced displacement, cannot be considered indicators of the causal mechanisms of decision-making. They are rather the result of a secondary reflection on experience, adapted to new life circumstances and existing structural constraints. Therefore, at the current stage of the war, it is more productive to focus on investigating how forcibly displaced persons interpret and experience their countries of residence. It is these perceptions that allow for a deeper under- standing of the dynamics of (im)mobility in the context of a protracted war.
By Anton Dorokh. A traditional Ukrainian village house (khata) had one floor, white clay-and-wood walls, a hay-covered roof, and small windows. Is there something in this architectural tradition that can serve as a counterpoint to the Soviet narrative? Our family house, which was built in the same style, was destroyed, the ability to return there every summer taken away, and this article is an attempt to resist further dehumanisation and erasure. This purpose made me ask my grandmother questions I had never asked before, to learn histories I did not know as a kid, and I hope that by sharing them with other people I can spark curiosity toward other aspects of Ukrainian culture that are now being erased.
By Miglė Bareikytė, Natasha Klimenko and Viktoriya Sereda. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has swiftly spread through both social and traditional media on a global scale. Meanwhile, with the spread of widely available generative AI technologies and its misuse for strategic disinformation by authoritarian regimes like Russia, the future of visualising war and conflict zones seems poised for confusion and uncertainty. The aim of the dossier is to analyse the difficult and painful environments that have emerged in Ukraine in the aftermath of various legacies of violence, including Russia’s full-scale invasion.
By Ganna Goncharenko. Folk music and folklore preserve collective memory, traditions, and values of a people, combining the past, the present, and the potential of the future. Today, folklore includes not only songs and tales, but also ritual practices, urban legends, anecdotes, and even internet memes. Its remarkable ability to preserve historical experience and remain a support for the community will be further examined in this article.
By Olha Haidamachuk, Lidia Kuzemska, Taisiia Ratushna, and Yuliia Soroka. In June 2025, four Fellows of the Prisma Ukraїna: War, Migration, Memory research group at the Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin took part in the 9th annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies dedicated to “Resilience and Adaptation in Difficult Times”. On the second day, the Fellows organised a very well-attended panel entitled “Memories of War: Barriers and Bridges between Past, Present, and Future in the Ukrainian Experience”. They reflect on the different panels and talks and give an insight into the topics discussed.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
ISSN: 2199-2134
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