At the Prague 2026 Conference, Human Experience of War will be organized as a separate dedicated section.
This section will be distinct from the conference programme dealing with soil, freshwater systems, contamination, environmental monitoring, and other ecological consequences of war.
The environmental sciences remain one major direction of the conference.
Human Experience of War represents another: the preservation, transmission, and interpretation of the human record of war.
The two directions may sometimes intersect — for example where memories help identify past environmental exposure or health consequences — but they will not be merged into a single discussion.
A dedicated international section
The section will bring together people and organizations that preserve different forms of war experience.
These may include veterans and veterans’ organizations, families, community organizations, researchers, historians, museums, archives, oral-history initiatives, memorial institutions, historical societies, battlefield organizations, and others engaged with the preservation of war memory.
Participation is not limited to contemporary conflicts.
Organizations concerned with earlier wars are also welcome.
The experience of a recent war may still be preserved in living testimony.
The experience of an older war may survive through letters, diaries, archives, cemeteries, monuments, battlefield landscapes, museums, family histories, and historical organizations.
Both belong to the larger question of how societies preserve the human record of war.
An important starting point — but not the boundary
One of the first practical strands developed for Prague 2026 emerged through contacts with veterans and veterans’ organizations in the United States.
This work is connected with the Vietnam War, Agent Orange, dioxin exposure, and questions about long-term health and environmental consequences.
This remains an important part of the 2026 discussion.
But it is one starting point rather than the definition of the section.
The conference is now opening the discussion much more widely.
Perspectives from other countries, other veteran communities, other conflicts, historical societies, museums, archives, memorial organizations, and communities preserving the memory of earlier wars are equally relevant.
From direct witnesses to historical preservation
The section will consider different stages through which war experience survives.
For some conflicts, direct witnesses are still living.
For others, the principal sources are descendants, family records, oral histories, and community memory.
For older conflicts, knowledge may now be carried mainly by archives, historians, museums, battlefield landscapes, cemeteries, monuments, historical societies, and commemorative traditions.
This creates a broad international discussion extending across different historical periods.
The purpose is not to place different wars into one narrative.
Nor is it to determine which national interpretation is correct.
Instead, the conference asks how experiences of war are preserved, how they change over generations, what is lost, and what future researchers may still be able to reconstruct.
Questions for discussionParticipants may address questions such as:● What knowledge disappears when the last direct witnesses of a war are gone?● What do veterans, civilians, families, and local communities preserve that official institutions may not?● How should oral histories and personal memories be documented and evaluated?● What role do archives, museums, historical societies, memorials, cemeteries, and battlefield landscapes play after living memory disappears?● How are different national, family, and local memories of the same conflict preserved?● What happens when former enemies commemorate the same battlefield?● How can historical memory be preserved without reducing complex conflicts to a single narrative?● What materials should organizations preserve today for researchers fifty, one hundred, or two hundred years from now?● Can human testimony and historical memory help identify questions concerning environmental exposure, health effects, displacement, or other long-term consequences of war?
Different perspectives are welcomeWar produces different experiences and different memories.
Soldiers and civilians may remember the same events differently.
Different countries may preserve very different interpretations of the same conflict.
Victors, defeated armies, displaced populations, local residents, families, and later generations may all construct different narratives.
The Human Experience of War section does not require these perspectives to be reconciled into one interpretation.
The conference seeks to create a space where different historical experiences can be documented and discussed respectfully while remaining open to critical research.
ParticipationBecause many relevant participants and organizations are located in different countries, a substantial part of this section will be accessible online.
This makes it possible to involve veterans, families, historians, museums, historical societies, memorial institutions, community organizations, and researchers who cannot travel to Prague.
The aim is not simply to create a sequence of presentations.
The section is intended to begin an international conversation among people and organizations that preserve different parts of the human experience of war.
Prague 2026 as a starting point
No single conference can create a complete framework for such a large subject.
Prague 2026 is therefore a starting point.
It will allow participants from very different historical traditions to meet, compare approaches to preservation, identify disappearing sources, and consider possible forms of future cooperation.The first question is deliberately simple:
What should be preserved now so that the human experience of war is not lost?