Top European award for experts’ work to preserve vulnerable Ukrainian heritage
Experts in Ukrainian history and culture at the University of St Andrews have been awarded one of Europe’s top heritage awards for their work to preserve vulnerable archive collections in Ukraine.
The ‘Un/Archiving Post/Industry’ project, led by Dr Victoria Donovan and supported by PhD student Viktoriia Grivina from St Andrews’ School of Modern Languages, in partnership with the Centre for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine, was the only UK-Ukraine collaboration to submit an entry in the Europa Nostra Awards 2023.
Dr Donovan’s collaborative work led to the creation a vast digital archive of endangered industrial heritage materials from the East of Ukraine, including the partly occupied Donbas region. This important work has proved timely and invaluable, as originals of many of the digitised materials have since been looted or destroyed by Russian armies waging war against the country.