Laura Osadciw

Supervisors: Dr Uilleam Blacker and Dr Diana Georgescu

Present Status: MPhil Candidate

Working title of thesis: Stories Half Shared: Memory, Postmemory and Narrative Biography Construction in the Postwar Ukrainian-British Diaspora

Research: Enduring and often fluid, the stories told by Ukrainian displaced persons in the aftermath of the Second World War were frequently complex and changeable, reflective of the complicated wartime histories that had gone before.

My research will explore these stories, focusing on the Ukrainians who settled in Britain in the immediate postwar years, and considering the reasons for their initial narrative decisions, the role of memory here, and the presence of nostalgia, fabrication, omission, and the endurance of silence.

Exploring an intergenerational component, I will examine the role of postmemory and intergenerational co-creation, as I reflect on the impact of first-generation narrative decisions on later generations, ultimately questioning the role of storytelling in history, and its presence in the historical perceptions and identities of the present-day diaspora.

Research interests: Memory, Ukraine, Russia, postmemory, diasporas, post-conflict spaces, displaced persons, Poland, historical nostalgia, identity, The Holocaust, The Shtetl and the pre 1945 Jewish experience, late Imperial Russia