In May 2026, the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History launched an ambitious project — “Building a Global Digital Presence for Ukrainian Women’s History.” This initiative emerged from the participation of UARWH representatives in the “Accelerator for Scholarly Societies” program, part of the Science at Risk project, in the spring of 2026.
During a two-week online training program in organizational and financial management, strategic planning, and communications, the idea took shape for a comprehensive digital transformation of UARWH aimed at strengthening its institutional capacity and increasing its visibility in both the Ukrainian and international academic landscapes. Following a competitive pitch among over fifty projects, the UARWH team — Oksana Kis, Olha Nikolaienko, Iryna Savchenko, Viktoriia Vlasova, and Nataliia Zalietok — was awarded one of five grants to bring this vision to life. UARWH member Marta Horokhovianko also joined the team.
The comprehensive digital transformation, which took place from mid-April to mid-June 2026, encompassed four key areas:
- Full website redesign: the portal womenhistory.org.ua was overhauled with a modern design, user-friendly features, and a fully functional English-language version.
- Launch of a digital library: the first systematized open-access digital collection in Ukraine of scholarly works on Ukrainian women’s and gender history (in Ukrainian and other languages) was created.
- Social media presence: official UARWH pages were established on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, serving as a space for engagement with the academic community and a channel for public outreach.
- International partnership: UARWH partnered on this project with the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS, USA), which provided substantial support in building the digital library and is participating in the project’s closing webinar to share experiences in developing digital feminist resources.
The international webinar “Building a Global Digital Presence for Ukrainian Women’s History” will take place online on June 19, 2026, at 7:00 PM Kyiv time. To participate, please register.
The project has not only made it possible to redesign the website, which will serve as a valuable resource for researchers and educators, contributing to the advancement of research and teaching in women’s and gender history, but through UARWH’s active social media presence, it will also facilitate outreach to new members and more effectively promote knowledge of women’s past to a broader public. “We are building an intellectual bridge connecting the Ukrainian academic community with the global scholarly mainstream and with our own society,” says project director Oksana Kis. “Without the Ukrainian women’s voice, the history of Europe will forever remain incomplete; without knowledge of women’s past, Ukrainians cannot fully understand themselves.”