Julia Buyskykh is a historian and anthropologist. She is writing her second PhD at the University College in Cork, Ireland. She has been a scholarship holder at the GHI Warsaw since April. As a researcher, she is interested in the interstices between religion, borders and borderlands and memories, exploring how creative ethnographic writing can more faithfully evoke ethnographic reality. This is also the focus of her current research project.
Julia, your project is dedicated to Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Poland. What exactly are you working on?
My research explores the chronic impact of the post-Second World War forcible resettlements and border changes. I examine these resettlements through h the interplay of people’s memories, identities, and individual sense of religious belonging in Eastern Europe, focusing more precisely on contemporary experiences. These are, for example, inherited memories and perspectives drawn from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic community in Poland, which is historically rooted there. It is a community that has overcome the thorny path: from a silenced underground minority during the communist era to emerge as a distinctive and modern vocal community whose role in the integration of war migrants from Ukraine has yet to be processed.
What are the main questions you want to answer?
I think there are two principal questions guiding my research.
First, what has the role of religion been in establishing and maintaining a sense of belonging, continuity, and, ultimately, home in the face of historically-catastrophic upheavals and displacements for minorities?
Second, what can we learn from people who strive to build their homes in difficult places or at difficult times? What lessons, in the midst of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, can we glean from oral testimonies on historical traumas? What can the past still teach us about resilience, endurance, collective continuity, and humanity?
You are already pretty far in answering these research questions. What has your work on the topic looked like so far?
Initially, I set up three field locations in Poland: Biały Bór, Warsaw and Przemyśl. My methodological approach was multi-sited ethnography. For each of these fields, I recruited important key gatekeepers and have already conducted cornerstone interviews with ten people. Another aspect of my fieldwork so far has been participant observation. For this, I have attended two pilgrimages and three parish feasts as well as collective commemorative liturgies at each field site.
Was there an interesting discovery that you had not expected?
I had initially been following a large commemorative pilgrimage that had been helping to frame the broader community’s experience of a plethora of contemporary events (e.g. invasion, displacement, integration, and different intergenerational experiences). I have subsequently come to discover a more widespread, de-centred network of rustic sacred spaces, maintained and regularly visited by a larger, and now dispersed, population of Ukrainian Greek Catholics from both sides of the Polish-Ukrainian border. This deeper geography of devotion transcends the traditional sense of belonging and borders in ways I had not anticipated when I began this project.
Your research also involves working in the field. How has your field research gone so far and what have you found out?
Engaged participant observation is intensive and draining while being some of the most satisfying research one may invest in. Spending days and weeks in the company of people who are generous enough to open their own lives and stand for me so that I can establish my own reputation in the field has been humbling and deeply rewarding, both personally and professionally. If I had one key finding at this point, it is that the generosity of the people I study with in the field seems to have no boundary – they are forthcoming and giving of their time and effort, following their own religious principles that guide them to trust, to explain, and to care. Understanding how their commitment to their faith structures their response to the ‘slings and arrows’ of both historical and current events is a revelation that I am slowly coming to appreciate in the fieldwork I have conducted among them.
However, field research is not the only part of your work. You also spend a lot of time at the DHI Warsaw. What are your other experiences with the institute?
Long-term fieldwork is often a lonely experience during the collection and analysis of research insights. Colleagues at the institute have proven themselves to be knowledgeable, professional and engaging at every opportunity. I look forward to strengthening my ties at the institute as I draw on the profound expertise of the staff and other visiting fellows, which will, I’m sure, bring greater insight and understanding to my data. Equally, as part of a community of peers, I am excited for the opportunities, for instance, during the lively colloquia, to give back to my colleagues and help them develop their own insights where I can. The work of the institute is to assemble a hospitable and sympathetic audience to exchange the research efforts of the faculty and guest speakers. It is a model of scholarly cooperation that deserves to be replicated far and wide.
For more on the topic, read Julia Buyskykh's article on the changing nature of borders and its impact on people’s identities and fates in today’s wartime Europe: https://trafo.hypotheses.org/52315.
