15 Svobody Ave., 79000, Lviv, Ukraine

Phone: (032) 297 0157; 72 7020; fax: (032) 297 0155;
e-mail: inst@ethnolog.lviv.ua

The Ethnology Institute was set up in 1992 on the basis of Lviv Branch of M. Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnography.

The focus of scholarly interests of the Institute is on research into various aspects of traditional and present-day culture of Ukrainians, as well as ethnology, history of Ukrainian professional art and its place in the all-European context, theory and history of folk applied and sacral art, folklore.

Recently its researchers have started studies in theoretical ethnology, Ukrainian natiology in particular, in ethnolinguistics, urban and gender issues etc.

The Institute incorporates five research departments: those of historical ethnology, present-day ethnology, folklore studies, art history and theory, folk art.

The Museum of Ethnography and Artistic Crafts has the status of a special subdivision. It stores about 90 thousand exhibits that were gathered through the century-long period.

The Institute trains research staff in its own post-graduate school in ethnology, fine arts, decorative and applied arts and folklore studies.

Among the major achievements of Institute’s research team is the work on fundamental 4-volume writing «Ethnic Origins and Ethnic History of Inhabitants of the Ukrainian Carpathians». Within the context of new tasks, theoretical and methodological approaches are updated, the interdisciplinary range is being broadened and new research methods involved. The Institute has also started to prepare new academic synthetic works on the basis of culture phenomena in the massif of Ukrainian ethnic border territories.

Of all-Slavic significance is research carried out in 1994-1999 under the project ‘Integrated historical and cultural studies and fixation of material and spiritual culture in radiation-contaminated Ukrainian Polissia zones’. Materials collected in this region formed database for the publication of several books of collected papers, monographs, academic reviews concerned with reconstructing ethnic traditional ways of life in radioactivity-polluted areas of Polissia – the region being the core of Eastern Slavic world.

Numerous monographic studies of Institute’s scholars have become significant events in academic community. Among such publications are: «The Ukrainian Painting of X - XVIII Centuries: Problems of Colour» and «Classicism and Romanticism in Ukrainian Art», «Finale of the Third Rome (Russian Messianic Idea at the Turn of Millennium)», «On the Way to Civil Society. Theoretical Grounds and Socio-Cultural Prerequisites of Democratic Transformations in Ukraine».

The Institute closely collaborates with its partners in the framework of International Commission on Culture Studies in the Carpathians. The collaboration has resulted in the academic synthesis «Heroes or Bandits», published by the Institute of European Folklore in Budapest.