Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

July 2023 - June 2024
Supported by the Dell Loy Hansen Family Foundation

HURI Research Project

Year of Thundering Nights: Charting the Paths of Eight Ukrainians through Russia's War on Ukraine

"I am working on a book charting the paths of eight Ukrainians through Russia’s war on Ukraine. Tentatively titled YEAR OF THUNDERING NIGHTS, my book ventures deep inside war-torn Ukraine, following the lives of real people in staggering detail as they confront war. Whereas reportage meets Ukrainians at the site of war and engages with them exclusively vis-à-vis war, I offer a different approach which provides the longed-for human stories of survival and resilience in war while contextualizing Ukrainians outside of war. We follow a unique array of characters, from eastern, central, southern, and western Ukraine, with disparate experiences and losses in war. Following them daily for many months has allowed me to see not just how their experiences and circumstances change as war continues, but how their inner worlds shift over time to cope with the ongoing destruction inherent in this war. The book tells their stories while also  working to offer a more expansive understanding of the history, ideas, conundrums, and shifting identities that mark this war. Ultimately, it coalesces into a meditation on the incomprehensible and deeply human task of believing in the future while destruction rages on. The book is under contract with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and is anticipated to be released in early 2025. My deepest thanks go to HURI for providing me a home while I write the book. The Ukrainian Research Institute’s community—its staff and faculty, visiting scholars, and those who come for presentations—is a rich one, and I’m glad to be a part of it." -- D.L.

Biography

Danielle Leavitt received her PhD in History from Harvard University in 2023. Her dissertation was entitled When the New Soviet Man Grew Old: The Meanings of Age and the Aging of Socialism, 1921-1991. In it she explored how ideas about human age, especially old age, shifted over the course of the Soviet Union’s own lifespan. She followed a group of Soviet Ukrainian scientists whose conceptualizations of lifespan and mortality influenced Soviet ideas at the highest levels and led to the founding of Soviet gerontology.