Heritage Project

The Ukrainian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand is in conversation with the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Australia and the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations about the production of an on-line resource in English and Ukrainian that would make available reliable information on the history of Ukrainian settlement in Australia and New Zealand.

It is anticipated that the resource, when fully developed, will carry articles on general topics such as immigration, government policies affecting Ukrainian immigrants, demographics, and organisational, religious and cultural life; places where Ukrainians have settled in significant numbers; churches and organisations; and notable individuals of Ukrainian background.

Predecessors

Several reference works are dedicated to the topic of Ukrainian life in Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand. They include the following:

Al’manakh ukrains’koho zhyttia v Avstralii [Almanac of Ukrainian Life in Austrlia]. Sydney: “Vil’na Dumka” and the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia, 1994.

Entsyklopediia Ukrains’koi Diiaspory: Tom 4 (Avstraliia – Aziia – Afryka) [Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian Diaspora, Vol. 4 (Australia, Asia and Africa)]. Kyiv: Shevchenko Scientific Society and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1995.

Ukraintsi Avstralii: Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk [Ukrainians in Australia: An Encyclopaedic Handbook]. Sydney: “Vil’na Dumka” and the Society for the Preservation of Ukrainian Heritage in Australia, 2001.

Ukraintsi v Avstralii: Materiialy do istorii poselennia ukraintsiv v Avstralii [Ukrainians in Australia: Sources for a History of the Settlement of Ukrainians in Australia]. Melbourne: Australian Federation of Ukrainian organisations and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Australia, 1966.

Ukraintsi v Avstralii: Tom II. [Ukrainians in Australia, Vol. II]. Melbourne : Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, 1998.

While these are valuable resources, the most recent is more than a decade old. They are in Ukrainian, which restricts their readership to people competent in that language. Not all of them are readily available even in major libraries. The Ukrainian Heritage in Australia and New Zealand Project aims to overcome many of these limitations.