The Project on Genocide, Psychiatry and Witnessing
Survivors' Testimonies Oral History Project

Survivors’ Testimonies Oral History Project

Principal Investigator: Stevan Weine MD; Co-investigators: Ivan Pavkovic MD and Tvrtko Kulenovic MD

The PI and his collaborators have engaged in extensive ethnographic and humanities studies of Bosnian survivors and their narratives. This work is based upon a thorough grounding in the literature on Bosnian culture, history, and the recent Balkan crisis. Methodologically, it draws upon ethnographic approaches that have been described in the works of cross cultural mental health research, oral history methodology, testimony, psychohistory, and sociology. This work has involved interviews of Bosnians in Bosnia, Europe, and the United States which were audiotaped, transcribed, and deposited in our oral history archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It has also resulted in a number of final products, including published studies of the Bosnians survivors narrative constructions of historical realities, Bosnian family, Bosnian women, and several on Bosnian survivor’s testimony. The ethnographic study of the Bosnian family provided a close, detailed portrayal and analysis of how a family uses its own strengths and resources to heal.

It also includes a humanities book, which is an exploration into memory and history to understand the traumatization not just to individuals, but to a whole society and its culture. This book is the first investigation of the Bosnian cultural value of "merhamet", a critical self and group concept associated with multi-ethnic co-existence. It is both a close, detailed portrayal of the experiences of surviving, producing and confronting ethnic cleansing and an exploration of the role of memories of collective traumatization in shaping human life and history. The work now also includes testimony interviews with Kosovar survivors of ethnic cleansing.