Keynote lecture: ‘The Names of Us. Stories of Ukrainian Diversity’ - Olesya Yaremchuk

In the book ‘Our Others. Stories of Ukrainian Diversity’ Olesya Yaremchuk explored the histories and personal stories of fourteen ethnic minority groups living within the boundaries of present-day Ukraine. She traveled to many settlements, from the bustling cities of Donbas and Bukovyna to the quiet villages of Bessarabia and Zakarpattia, to document how ethnic minorities of Ukraine live today and what memories they keep about their past. Russia´s full-scale war is changing the ethnic landscape of Ukraine and the stories collected in the book become an archive of memory. Many members of national communities were forced to leave their homes. For instance, the Meskhetian Turks who lived near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, the Greeks of Mariupol, or the Roma of Nova Kakhovka in Kherson Oblast. These new waves of displacement are also raising questions about the future of Ukraine’s multicultural society: What new picture of a multicultural Ukraine are we creating together? During the event, the author will present her book and talk about her current research.

Olesya Yaremchuk — researcher, programme curator at INDEX, and writer specializing in intercultural dialogue in borderland regions. She is the author of the book on national communities in Ukraine Our Others, and co-author and co-editor of Free Voices of Crimea: Stories of Crimean Journalists Imprisoned by the Kremlin. From 2017 to 2019, she served as editor-in-chief at Choven publishing house. Since 2022, she has been actively telling international audiences about Ukraine and continues to document stories about the country’s national communities. In 2024, she was a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. She is a laureate of the Samovydets competition and the LitAccent of the Year award, and a finalist for the ADAMI Media Prize, the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Award, and the Women in Arts Award.