CENTER FOR URBAN HISTORY OF EAST CENTRAL EUROPE

Their core work

The Center for Urban History of East Central Europe is a research institute based in Lviv, Ukraine, focused on the history, memory, and cultural heritage of cities across the East Central European region. Their work combines historical scholarship with applied heritage practice — they study how urban communities relate to their built heritage and how historic spaces can be reimagined for contemporary use. In EU project contexts, they contribute specialist regional expertise on East Central European urban landscapes, community-based heritage governance, and Holocaust-era history and memory. Their participation in EHRI-3 reflects their role as a Ukrainian node in the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, connecting regional archival resources to pan-European scholarly networks.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 engagement (OpenHeritage, 2018) was grounded in the practical, community-facing dimension of heritage: how to reuse historic buildings inclusively, how to govern shared spaces, and how to mobilize local identity through crowdsourcing. By 2020, their focus shifted toward formal scholarly infrastructure with EHRI-3, a large European research infrastructure project connecting Holocaust archives and research institutions across the continent. This signals a move from applied community heritage work toward deeper integration into European historical scholarship and archival infrastructure networks — a broadening of scope from local urban heritage governance to pan-European memory studies.

They are evolving from a regionally-embedded heritage practice organization into a recognized node in formal European research infrastructure, suggesting future collaboration opportunities in Holocaust studies, digital archives, and historical memory networks.

How they like to work

This organization has only ever participated as a consortium member — never as a coordinator — across both of its H2020 projects. Despite the modest funding received (EUR 120,062 total), they have engaged with 39 distinct partners across 18 countries, indicating they join large, multi-institutional projects rather than small focused collaborations. This pattern suggests they contribute highly specific regional and thematic expertise that broader consortia seek out, rather than driving project agendas themselves.

With 39 unique consortium partners across 18 countries from just two projects, their network is disproportionately broad for their funding volume — a sign they participate in large, diverse consortia. Their geographic reach spans Western and Eastern Europe, with Ukraine providing a distinctive gateway to post-Soviet archival and heritage contexts.

What sets them apart

As one of very few Ukrainian research institutions active in H2020, the Center brings a perspective on East Central European urban history that no Western European institute can replicate — particularly around Lviv, a city that has been Polish, Soviet, and Ukrainian, and whose layers of memory include Habsburg architecture, interwar Jewish life, and Soviet urbanism. Their combination of community heritage practice (OpenHeritage) and Holocaust research infrastructure (EHRI-3) makes them a rare partner for projects that need both applied heritage methodology and access to regional archival and memory expertise. For consortia targeting post-Soviet or borderland European contexts, they provide scholarly credibility and local institutional grounding that is genuinely difficult to source elsewhere.

Highlights from their portfolio

• OpenHeritage
  Their most thematically rich project, with dense keywords around community governance and adaptive reuse, making it the clearest window into their applied heritage methodology and local engagement expertise.
• EHRI-3
  Participation in the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure — one of Europe's major humanities research infrastructure projects — signals their standing as a recognized Ukrainian node in pan-European historical memory scholarship.