2026 Annual Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture
18 February 2026
“Between Narratives of Mourning and Humour: Memory and Resilience in Ukraine, 2022–25”
2-100 University Hall (UNH), North Campus
Presenter: Dr. Maryna Hrymych
Free admission: registration required
This lecture will be also availible online via Zoom
About the lecture:
From the first day of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine faced challenges that required immediate working through. This need was largely realized through communication on social media. Amid the torrent of textual, photo, and video content, there emerged both “one-day” messages and private reflections, as well as posts that became, to varying degrees, folklorized and integrated into the collective narrative.
Taken together, these narratives — both mournful and humorous — help people to process collective trauma while simultaneously fostering resilience and maintaining a sense of identity.
About the presenter:
Dr. Maryna Hrymych is a writer, folklorist, ethnographer, cultural manager, publisher, and diplomat. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Candidate of Philological Sciences, member of PEN Ukraine, the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine, the National Union of Local Historians of Ukraine, and the Memory Studies Association. Author of a biographical monograph on KuFC founder Bohdan Medwidsky in the form of essays on Ukrainian-Canadian folklore studies (2016), as well as editor of Robert-Bohdan Klymasz’s book Ukrainian Folk Culture in the Canadian Prairies (2013) and author of its afterword. Hrymych has written twenty novels and novellas, and she is the founder (2005) and director of the Duliby Publishing House.