HREC Research Grants 2025–26

I am delighted to annouce I have received a HREC Research Grant for 2025–26. The grant is an annual competition from the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, a project of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) of the University of Alberta. My project “Embodied Archives: Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor” is to inform the creation of 100 stories from the Holodomor using novel approaches to archiving, drawing and film. This is to include research of survivor testimonies in collections at the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC) in Toronto. The final result will be a feature-length animated documentary.

https://holodomor.ca/grants-opportunities/research-grants/research-grants-2025/

Interview with Andrew Jameson

 

On Sunday I was in the beautiful Malvern Hills to conduct an interview for a book I am writing – a forthcoming manuscript project. The interview was with Andrew Jameson, a former academic from Portsmouth Poly and the University of Lancaster, whose work I encountered at the SCRSS in London at a talk in 2020. Andrew spoke about his expertise in the development of Russian and Slav languages, myth and the traditional stove in culture, poetry and storytelling. This included tales of Baba Yaga, and a brilliant story of the ‘Domovik’ or the spirit of the household realm – important in Ukrainian folklore. Andrew told me a story of ‘transferring’ the spirit using a ritual, a clog behind the stove and an oral invitation for the spirit to ‘move house’ with the owners to keep the household a happy one. I acknowledge and thank funding from Manchester School of Art Research fund, which allowed me to document the interview, and thank you to Emily Davies (BA (Hons) Music and Sound Design) for sound design and recording the audio.

Meeting with Lisa – DMU Monday 12 January

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

Queen’s Building, sustainable 1990s architecture, 2001 a Space Odyssey, Forensic Architecture, art, academia, audience, launch dates,  Holodomor Museum, archives, Walid Raad, The Atlas Group, fragmented stories, Holodomor100, feature film, HREC funding, University of Toronto, workshop and conference, UCRDC archives, driving, ‘Knife Safe’ university, Vijay Patel Building, The Holodomor in Global Perspective, actions, fun, Sanskrit, Pich, interview with Andrew, Russian Magic Tales, stove construction, Baba Yaga, eating children, metaphor and rebirth, Jung, archetypes, ceramic tiles, interview in Ukraine, riding on the stove (character in tales) language construction, narrative, voice over, artist, book proposal, chapter and contents, summary, deadlines, completion and launch, journal article, colour, military, maps, fragments, Manovich, technical skills, archive, website, Hans Ulrich Obrist, meeting in April, driving, Birmingham, Manchester, IMD, fun.

Sanskrit

I am learning Sanskrit using the excellent ‘Sankrit for Beginners’ guide on learnsanskrit.org. I downloaded, printed and worked through the guide over Christmas, my photos show some of my work. I have covered vowels – basic, short, long, semivowels and compound vowels. I worked on the first 25 consonants and I love the scheme for pronunciation (figure 6). The final lesson I completed was about anusvāra and visarga the “after-sound” and “release”.

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Figure 9. 

Graphesis

 

Johanna Drucker’s 2014 text on structure, graphic organisation and visual principles. Drucker describes Graphesis as “the study of the visual production of knowledge”. The presentation of information and experience in visual form. In an environment where graphical language is the dominant mode of information presentation, this is urgent. Drucker analyses the graphical forms in visual arguments using logic and visual epistemology. Visualisation is always interpretation and the abstractions associated with statistical data carry with them a humanistic responsibility. Visual epistemology is about ways of knowing, through, in, and with the visual. Expressing knowledge with visual forms.

Dmytro Shtohryn International Ukrainian Studies Conference

From October 2 – October 4 I was in Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. to attend the Dmytro Shtohryn International Ukrainian Studies Conference. This fantastic conference was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organised by the Slavic Reference Service and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. This included a fantastic keynote address from Dr. Emily Channel-Justice (Harvard University) and a piano recital by Pavlo Gintov, including a performance with Olga Zaitseva-Herz.

The content of the conference was inspiring. I had a very quick look at library materials and found some great working spaces on campus. My paper, ‘Historical Continuations in Personal Testimonies from the Holodomor’ is about the role and responsibility of art to bridge literal truth with imaginative reality, based on Lawrence L. Langer’s theories of the literary imagination. I spoke about my archival work with Jerry Berman’s letters including inspiration from literature using principles of ‘endogenesis’ materials created by an author, and ‘exogenesis’ sources, external texts and references.

This was my first time in Chicago. On my first night I experienced Harold’s Chicken, the Carbide and Carbon Building and Chicago Board of Trade at high speed. On my return journey I had time for lunch in the Ukrainian village. On my return I had the absolute pleasure of welcoming Professor Simon Morris to SODA for a talk about his editorial work with Inscription journal for Creative Digital Design apprentices, followed by pizza.

Pendry (Carbide and Carbon Building) (Burnham Brothers, 1929)

Jerry Berman: Digital Letters from Ukraine in the Holodomor. Source: https://bermanarchives.online/ 

Varenyky at Old Lviv restaurant, Chicago.

 Simon Morris and pizza.

Professor Lisa Stansbie: Meeting Notes 22 September

 

Advisory board, members roles, terms of engagement, Doodle poll, dates, models for chairing, Harvard libraries, exhibition catalogue, project visuals, maps, timelines, schedules of work, data categorisation, meta data and tagging, co-authorship, reading, future projects, meeting next summer – project ideas, Vijay Patel building, staff drawing, DMU global, travel, theory and literature, reading material, non-negotiable library time, ERC mentoring, Weinerberger, political associations, maps and layers, translation project.