My research has been supported by many colleagues, research grants and fellowships granted by educational and academic institutes, such as the University of Melbourne, Association of Ukrainians in Victoria (Australia), Queen’s University, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Holodomor Research Education and Holodomor Consortium, University of Alberta, World Economic History Congress, Shevchenko Scientific Society (USA), German-Ukrainian Commission of Historians, Petro Vasylenko Kharkiv National Technical University of Agriculture (State Biotechnological University, Kharkiv), and V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. I am immensely grateful for their personal and institutional support and encouragement.
Academic and Research Appointments
- The inaugural Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies, University of Melbourne
- Research Fellow, Ukrainian History Global Unitiative
- Teaching Fellow, Teaching Assistant, Research Assistant, Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada) – Department of History.
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna, Austria).
- Postdoctoral Fellow, German Historical Institute (Warsaw, Poland).
- Stuart Ramsay Tompkins Visiting Professor, University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).
- Petro Jacyk Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto – Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and Holodomor Research and Education Consortium.
- Visiting Fellow, the German-Ukrainian Commission of Historians – Ludwig-Maximilian University (Munich, Germany).
- Associate Professor, Petro Vasylenko Kharkiv National Technical University of Agriculture (now State Biotechnological University, Kharkiv) – Department of UNESCO “Philosophy of Human Communication,” Social and Humanitarian Disciplines.
Current Projects
Extremes of Famine Survival in Soviet Ukraine
My doctoral project, Survival Under Extremes: Human, Environmental, and Material Relationships Amidst the Soviet Famines in Ukraine (Queen’s University in Kingston, 2024), explored how Ukrainians coped with the devastating Soviet famines of the twentieth century — using survival practices, material valuables, and the environment to survive under extreme conditions. The thesis has been shortlisted for The Philippa Hetherington Prize by the Australian Historical Association as the best postgraduate thesis in general history (excluding Australian history). I am currently preparing a manuscript based on this research for publication with an academic press.
My PhD project examined consumption, materialities, and nature during the famines in Soviet Ukraine. This research will provide a nuanced understanding of the interconnections between survival practices, material culture, and environment during the Soviet famines in Ukraine. The interconnections between survival practices, famine foods, emotions (i.e., disgust), and memory have been analyzed in my recent study in collaboration with my thesis supervisor, Professor Rebecca Manley (see here). Besides focusing on the human experiences of survival, the study also suggests examining how the famines changed the natural environment, especially plants and wild and domestic animals. This study focus is based on my earlier research on children, the environment, and the materialities of survival during the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine.
Consumption in Early Soviet Ukraine Through Gender, Age, and Spatial Dimensions
I am working on a monograph (in Ukrainian), which is focused on analyzing the particular and common features of early Soviet consumption in Ukraine and the Soviet Union. Among some recent publications on this research project, see the article on children’s materialities and consumption. I have published papers on female, male, and children consumption practices and on some objects of material culture, such as children’s toys, furs and chocolate (see in edited volume Consumption and Advertising in Eastern Europe and Russia in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Heidi Hein-Kircher, Magdalena Eriksroed-Burger, and Julia Malitska). Among some particular features of the organization of early Soviet trade and consumption spaces, I examine the Ukrainian department stores in the 1920-1930s and their place in the Soviet and contemporary urban space. Drawing on nearly a decade of research and numerous publications, this project explores the early decades of Ukrainian Soviet consumption and material culture. I am currently finalising the manuscript for publication with a Ukrainian academic press.
The Environmental History of the Sunflower and Monocultures
My most recent project traces the sunflower’s journey from an unfamiliar plant on Ukrainian soil to a dominant monoculture and a powerful postcolonial symbol. It is a story of land, agriculture, food, and meaning — deeply rooted in Ukraine, yet resonating globally.
War, Material Culture, & Environment
As a scholar from Ukraine, I contribute to conversations on the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian War on the environment, animals, and material culture. I am working on a paper on materialities in the oral histories of Ukrainians displaced by the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Oral History of the Ukrainian Community in Australia Through the Memory of the Descendants
This project is focused on the history of the Ukrainian community of Australia with a focus on memory about the displacement after the Second World War. It is generously supported by the Ukrainian Studies Support Fund of the Association of Ukrainians in Victoria.
Association of Ukrainians in Victoria Archive as a Source of Community Memory and Knowledge on the Defence of Human Rights in Ukraine
This project examines the history of human rights activism among the Ukrainian community of Victoria. It is generously supported by the Ukrainian Studies Foundation of Australia.
Completed Projects (see the list of publications):
Survival Under Extremes: Human, Environmental, and Material Relationships Amidst the Soviet Famines in Ukraine.
Queen’s University in Kingston. Thesis. 2024. https://hdl.handle.net/1974/33012
Famine does not emerge in a vacuum but takes place in specific political, social, and natural environments in which all elements are intertwined. These interconnections played out vividly during the Soviet famines of 1921–1923, 1932–1933, and 1946–1947 in Ukraine. Each of these famines imposed significant pressures on the human, natural, and material worlds. As pivotal events in Ukrainian and Soviet history, they became major human existential crises of the twentieth century. This thesis seeks to complicate the understanding of human survival practices during the famines. Survival depended on a number of important factors, including human agency and the availability of resources. The study explores what resources were available to the starving across domestic and environmental spaces, such as kitchen gardens, fields, forests, water reservoirs and wetlands, and how the starving made use of them. Moving around the household as well as environmental and industrial landscapes, it further explores the significance of food waste in the survival practices of the starving. By ‘following’ the traces of waste in urban and rural landscapes, including, among others, dumpsters, slaughterhouses, cattle cemeteries and railway stations, the thesis charts the topography of waste and illuminates the critical changes in human–food and human–waste relationships in times of extremes. Looking at the larger scale of interactions with the environment, the study examines how famines impacted human-animal relationships and how Soviet state policies affected the livelihoods of animals, both domestic and wild. Taking into account the devastating impact of famines on animals, the study suggests approaching famines as multispecies catastrophes. Lastly, focusing on material objects as resources for famine survival, e.g. household items, clothes, coins, and jewellery objects, this research explores the changes in the essential meaning of things amidst times of extreme crises and violence. Focusing on the entangled histories of famine survival in times of extreme crisis, the study explores the impact of losses brought by famine experiences on individual and public memory.
Spain, Spread of Socialism, and the Soviet Famines of the early 1930s: Towards a Global History of the Holodomor in Ukraine (with Dr. Maria Roser Alvarez-Klee, University of Barcelona).
This study is focused on the analysis of the international context and reception of the early 1930s Ukraine’s famine, the Holodomor, in the Second Spanish Republic. With this research, we aim to contribute to the historiographic discussions on the global dimension of the Soviet famines of the early 1930s and the Holodomor in particular (see, research projects and conferences).
Iryna Skubii 