The Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen as its next director.
Dr. Khanenko-Friesen is a professor of anthropology, a cultural ethnographer, and an oral historian with expertise in post-socialist transition, diaspora studies, migration, and community engagement. Her research agenda focuses on Ukrainian Canadian culture, Ukraine, and its new post-socialist diasporas.
Natalia recently returned from her sabbatical year, most of which she spent abroad, including a term at Harvard University. She continued working on her two current projects, oral history of decollectivization in Ukraine and transatlantic letter exchanges between Ukrainians in the diaspora and homeland. Natalia has been a long-term member of PCUH, served as its director previously, and managed the Centre’s research program, “Personal Sources Archives.”
A founding editor of Canada’s internationally-recognized Engaged Scholar Journal, with the mission to promote community-university collaborative scholarship, she also continues to oversee the Journal’s operations. She says that these two areas — community-engaged scholarship and Ukrainian Studies in Canada — overlap meaningfully and continue to inform her work.