Oksana Kis

Oksana Kis is a feminist historian and anthropologist, a senior research fellow and a head of the Department of Social Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (in Lviv). She authored two books: Zhinka v tradytsiinii ukrainskii kilturi druhoi polovyny 19 – pochatku 20 stolittia (Lviv, 2008; 2n ed. - 2012) and Ukrainky v GULAGu: vyzhyty znachyt peremohty (Lviv, 2017; 2nd revised ed. - 2020). The latter was listed among the 30 most significant books of the Ukrainian Independence by the Ukrainian Book Institute (2021). Its English translation Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, 2021) was awarded the Translated Book Prize from Peterson Literary Fund in December 2021. She also edited and co-edited several volumes on women’s history, including the award-winning book Ukrainski zhinky u hornyli modernizatsii (Kharkiv, 2017). Her article Women’s Experience of the Holodomor: Challenges and Ambiguities of Motherhood was awarded the Robert Conquest Prize in Holodomor Studies by HREC in 2022.

Since 2010 Oksana Kis has serves as a President of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History. She is also a co-founder of the Ukrainian Oral History Association (2006). In 2014-2020 Oksana Kis was an Editor-in-Chief of the academic website Ukraina Moderna; she is a member of the editorial team of Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History. In 2002 she joined the board of the Association of Women in Slavic Studies. In 2018 she was elected to the Scientific Council of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine.
Dr. Kis is a recipient of several academic awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright Scholarship (2003 – Rutgers University 2003-04; Columbia University 2011-12), Shklar Research Fellowship (Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University 2007), Petro Jacyk Visiting Professorship (Columbia University 2010), Stuart Ramsay Tompkins Professorship (University of Alberta 2013), Petro Jacyk Research Fellowship (University of Toronto 2018).

She has taught at Columbia University (2010, 2012), University of Alberta (2013-14), New School of Social Research (2022-23), Free Ukrainian University (2017), Ukrainian Catholic University, and Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.

The areas of her expertise include Ukrainian women’s history, anthropology of the Gulag, oral history, and gender transformations in post-socialist countries. Her current research focuses on everyday lives of the Ukrainian refugees in the displaced persons camps in post-WWII Europe.