As part of the series “Science in Wartime”, held to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the project “In the Thunderstorm of War” was presented in a unique and moving format on 2 March 2025 at the Theater Basel. The event took place as the closing session (Finissage) of the exhibition “Unissued Diplomas”, organized by the University of Basel’s East European Studies program, URIS (Ukrainian Research in Switzerland), and the Ukrainian Association in Basel.
What made this event particularly powerful was the involvement of students from the University of Basel, who selected and read aloud excerpts from interviews collected in the In the Thunderstorm of War project. These were not staged performances or dramatic readings. Rather, they were moments of quiet, attentive presence — of giving voice to Ukrainian scholars who have continued to teach, think, and write amid war, displacement, and existential threat.
Through their voices, the audience encountered testimonies of frontline educators, displaced anthropologists, volunteer historians, and scientists holding onto intellectual work as a lifeline. The readings were interspersed with short reflections on the project’s goals: to document, preserve, and share the lived experience of academic life in wartime Ukraine.
The act of reading itself became an act of solidarity. Students, most of whom had never lived through war, embodied for a moment the words and dilemmas of their Ukrainian counterparts — questions of meaning, responsibility, and survival. The result was a palpable sense of connection and empathy, a bridging of distances not only geographic but also emotional and disciplinary.
This public reading demonstrated that scholarship is not only about producing knowledge, but also about listening, especially when those we listen to are enduring circumstances that threaten their very ability to speak. It was a reminder that even in the relative safety of Basel, students and scholars can play a role in amplifying voices that risk being silenced.
