Olia and Marko Pavlyshyn Visit the Kule Folklore Centre

Among the many summer visitors to the Kule Folklore Centre, we were delighted to welcome guests from Melbourne, Australia — Olia and Marko Pavlyshyn, who are well known to many in our Alberta community and in Ukrainian academia worldwide.

Marko Pavlyshyn is an emeritus professor of Ukrainian Studies at Monash University and former head of its Mykola Zerov Centre for Ukrainian Studies. He is a prominent scholar of Ukrainian literature and culture, a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and an international member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Both Marko and Olia are active and influential members of the Ukrainian community of Victoria province and across Australia.

During their visit, the Pavlyshyns learned about the KuFC’s recent activities and were gifted a copy of our latest annual report, 25 Years of Weaving Stories Across Cultures and Generations. They also explored the organization and work of the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives, documenting some of its practices through photographs and video, with the aim of adapting these materials for use by Ukrainian community archives in Victoria.

We are very grateful to Olia and Marko for their kind donation of Paralpi by Zaachariaha Fielding — the official poster for the 2026 National NAIDOC Week, Australia's national celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures — to the BMUFA’s rich poster collection.