Life After Traumatic Limb Amputation: Individual Experiences of Prosthetic Fitting and Self-Reconstruction of Ukrainian Wounded Servicemen

 

Based on individual stories of Ukrainian servicemen who sustained traumatic limb amputations since the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this lecture examined their lived experiences of wounding, prosthetic fitting, and body-restorative technologies, as well as the reconstruction of the self and everyday life, and their socio-professional reintegration. It also explored the various forms of assistance and solidarity they have received from a range of actors— the state local authorities, prosthetic centers, charitable organizations, family members— in the context of a profound structural reconfiguration of prosthetics and rehabilitation since 2022. Finally, the lecture addressed the methodological and ethical challenges involved in interviewing servicemen who have sustained severe injuries, particularly the difficulties of accessing and representing intimate and traumatic experiences through interviews.

 

 

Ioulia Shukan is a sociologist, professor at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and Researcher at the Center for Russian, Caucasian and Est-European and Centralasian Studies (CERCEC). She has recently published Citoyennes soignantes. Guerre, femmes et fabrique du commun en Ukraine (Caring Citizens. War, women and the fabric of the common in Ukraine) (Éditions de la MSH, 2025), drawing from her long-term ethnographical research in 2014-2022, on Ukrainian women’s involvement in voluntary caregiving for wounded servicemen at Kharkiv military hospital. She is currently working on a new project that explores, in sociology and in real time, but also in dialogue with the history of the 20th century wars and mutilations, the bodily impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war with a particular focus on individual experiences of traumatic limb amputation, on reinvention of civic solidarities in the face of this experience and, beyond that, on reconfiguration of care for people with disabilities in Ukraine.