Announcement of Appointment

It gives me great pleasure to announce that our Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography, Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, has been appointed Interim Director of the Kule Folklore Centre, commencing January 1, 2024.  Dr. Sembaliuk Cheladyn has been long established and well recognized as a graphic artist, having earned a BFA at the University of Alberta before turning her talents as a researcher to the completion of an MA in Ukrainian Folklore, and recently, a PhD in Media and Cultural Studies. Larisa's teaching and mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students is grounded in these three fields of expertise, fostering a lively engagement with the research collections of the Kule Folklore Centre and the Bohdan Medwidsky Archives in her classes and in the resulting student exhibitions.

Larisa also connects the KuFC to the wider Ukrainian Canadian community’s arts and cultural scene, as both a member of the community and as a professional illustrator widely known for her watercolours of Ukrainian folklore themes and via her design and curation of exhibitions for the Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts (ACUA) at the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA), Oseredok Gallery in Winnipeg, the Grupo Li Gallery in Caracas, the Botanical Gardens Gallery in Geneva, and the Ukrainian Museum of Canada in Toronto. She is currently designing and curating a multi-city creative exhibition on the legacy of the Ukrainian Voice newspaper, attracting significant external funding. Her research on the visualization of cultural memory and the subject of her PhD on the life work of the graphic artist and social commentator Jacob Maydanyk supplies the impetus for her current exhibition under development. 

Larisa brings boardroom expertise and executive experience as a long-time member of the Board of The Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre. She joined the Board of Governors for the Kule Folklore Centre, as well as the KuFC’s executive committee in 2022.  She is also a longtime advocate for community outreach, putting her creative practice into education for the public good, through her inventive presentations for the young participants in the popular UA Senate program, U School, and within the past year, designing a new KuFC marketing platform to make our folklore publications more accessible to the public.

Please join me in offering congratulations to Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, and in the celebration of our good fortune in attracting her to this additional role at the Kule Folklore Centre. 

—Andie Palmer, PhD

Interim Director