The Kosovo Oral History Initiative was conceived of during the summer of 2012 as a collaboration between the Kosovo Women’s Network (Pristina) and The New School for Public Engagement (NY), where women researchers and activists from Pristina and New York met in order to discuss a shared dream: to rescue the voices of leaders and ordinary people that Kosovo’s inconstant official histories had erased.
Instead of being limited by narratives of victimization and constraints of group thinking, KOHI sought to recover the entire life experiences of individuals. Thanks to seed funds from The New School and private donors, as well as support from the Kosovo Women’s Network, and most importantly the work of volunteers, KOHI began to film interviews. Because Albanian women’s roles in times of war and peace has been most often sidelined, if not forgotten, this group became the natural building block of the project. All interviews are collected and presented on this website, and are filmed and transcribed in Albanian, English, and Serbian. In 2015, the Kosovo Oral History Initiative became an independent organization, and began to develop broader research themes. Since then, the KOHI has also researched World War II in Kosovo, the Campaign to Reconcile Blood Feuds, and the work of Kosovan artists and writers.