Recovering Ukrainian Women’s History to Promote Gender Equality and Build Capacity for Preservation of Marginalised Cultural Heritage

GCRF Funding Cycle
2020-21

Principal Investigator
Margarita Vaysman

Schools
Modern Languages

ODA countries
Ukraine

Sustainable Development Goals
Goal 1, Goal 2


The project has 2 aims

  1. to bring together women’s history educators (primarily school teachers and librarians) and those with historical, project­ management and curatorial expertise in Ukraine and Scotland;
  2. to create accessible, empowering public discourse in which Ukrainian women’s history is presented. Aim 1 is achieved through organising a knowledge exchange network and capacity-building workshop in Kyiv.

The network’s seminars will be widely advertised and open to the general public, and we expect follow-up collaborations to arise with Scottish institutions-network members (Glasgow Women’s Library, Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Ukrainian Community Centre). The workshop will feature showcases of project activity from Ukrainian partners in different regions (Kyiv, Kharkiv); and focus groups to develop a toolkit for the use of women’s history in education to address gender inequality and preserve marginalised cultural heritage.

Aim 2 is achieved through creating the online database and reference volume ‘Pioneering Women in Ukraine’. The database and reference volume will diversify the existing representation of ‘great women’, by including figures from Ukrainian ethnic minority diasporas, faiths and sexual identities and decolonise it by separating it from the bigger narratives of Soviet history of gender emancipation. The workshop and network will facilitate the use of the database in building curricula, library exhibitions, outreach activities in Ukraine and abroad.