The Inscriptions of Saint Sophia in Kyiv: Participatory and research grounded approaches to data collection during war

This paper examines community engagement, participatory methodologies, and inclusive practices in digital humanities as essential strategies for data collection during wartime. The Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, houses over 7,000 inscriptions spanning more than a millennium, composed in diverse languages and scripts. These inscriptions are multilingual, multimodal, and layered, offering a rich yet endangered source for historical and cultural research amid ongoing Russian aggression. Since February 2022, over 470 culturally significant sites have been damaged or destroyed. While Saint Sophia has not been a direct target, its proximity to key infrastructure renders it vulnerable to missile and drone strikes. In response, researchers from Sweden have employed stakeholder interviews, knowledge exchange, and participatory data collection methods to preserve this heritage. These approaches challenge the prevalent assumption within the heritage sector that documentation and digitisation are definitive processes, while also addressing the institutional divide between technical and heritage expertise. The “Digital Documentation of Inscriptions in the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv” project began by identifying key stakeholders and their data needs through interviews and the establishment of a reference group. This group enabled broader expert participation in an initial workshop aimed at evaluating and refining digitisation methods. Museum personnel at Saint Sophia have played a central role in testing and assessing these methods on site. They have also been trained in workflows that enable them to independently conduct high-quality digitisation, data preprocessing, and data management, ensuring local capacity building and sustainable heritage preservation.