Monitoring of the world press regarding the coverage of Ukrainian heritage and the project of the information search e-platform UKROPEDIA are the results of the participation of Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy scientists within the framework of the ERASMUS international program.

Scientists of the Educational-Scientific Institute of Foreign Languages ​​and the Educational-Scientific Institute of International Relations, History and Philosophy joined the international team of researchers in the Jean Monnet grant project “Challenges and opportunities of EU heritage diplomacy in Ukraine”.

The project, which involved researchers from 15 higher education institutions from different countries of the world, is coordinated by the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). The participants of the project are the universities of Hong Kong, Georgia, Estonia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the USA, France, the Czech Republic, Sweden, two universities of Great Britain and two Ukrainian universities – National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy.

The EU, grounded in democratic values, actively implements heritage diplomacy in foreign relations. Therefore, this project aims to expand, deepen, and exchange knowledge regarding the EU’s approach to cultural heritage, in particular in Ukraine during the Russian-Ukrainian war. It brings together specialists in EU foreign policy, strategic communications, Eastern European memory policy and cultural practices on an interdisciplinary basis.

Within the scope of the grant research, BKNUC scientists monitored the world press regarding the coverage of Ukrainian heritage and developed and tested the project of the information search e-platform UKROPEDIA (UKRainskyi OPir (Ukrainian Resistance)), which generates English- and Ukrainian-language information about Ukrainian heritage collected from the Internet and systematizes this information for quick thematic search of the necessary material.

Our scientists presented the results of the first year of research at the international conference “Challenges of the EU heritage diplomacy”, which was held at the the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Professor Svitlana Zhabotynska (BKNUC project coordinator), Professor Natalia Zemzyulina, and Doctor of Philological Sciences Oksana Pyetsukh summarized the monitoring and formulated recommendations for the EU regarding strategic communications in the field of heritage diplomacy in Ukraine. Media analysis of nine Western countries and six countries of the Global South was conducted by the joint research team from Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy and the University of Canterbury under the leadership of the work package coordinator Professor Natalia Chaban (the University of Canterbury), a world-renowned researcher of strategic and media communications and an alumna of BKNUC.

The presentations by the Cherkasy scientists received high praise at the conference. After the conference in Brussels, they held consultations with colleagues regarding further work on heritage diplomacy research, visited the European Parliament and the House of European History. The work on preserving Ukrainian heritage with the involvement of EU diplomacy continues.

The Educational-Scientific Institute of Foreign Languages