Wells Fellow

Iryna Voloshyna, Ph.D. candidate in the IU Bloomington Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, has earned the 2024 Wells Graduate Fellowship. 

The fellowship is funded by Herman B Wells’s estate, judged by the Graduate Faculty Council Awards Committee, and awarded each year by the University Graduate School to students who demonstrate the qualities for which Chancellor Wells was renowned: leadership abilities, academic excellence, character, social consciousness, and generosity of spirit. 

“She is poised to become the leading folklorist of Ukraine and its diaspora,” Jason Baird Jackson, director of graduate studies for the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, wrote in his letter of recommendation. “That is not a tiny claim in disguise because Ukraine has a robust history of work—and a strong contemporary presence—in the field.” 

As reported by Barbara Brosher in a February 2023 story, Voloshyna received the inaugural American Folklore Society Presidential Award for Meritorious Service for her ongoing efforts to preserve Ukrainian cultural heritage. 

“Cultural heritage is one of the main markers of a nation,“ Voloshyna told Brosher. “If you’re able to erase that, it’s very easy to deny the existence of a nation. And this is the moment when Ukrainians are fighting to remain who we are.”  

Read the story on News at IU 

On the first day of the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, a group of folklorists, ethnomusicologists, ethnologists, and heritage studies scholars from Ukraine reached out to Voloshyna, asking her to help them save their decades of work. Voloshyna sprang to action, reaching out to the American Folklore Society, based at IU, and coordinating the provision of free unlimited cloud space to the Ukrainian scholars. On top of this effort, she has dedicated hundreds of hours to volunteer work including translating materials, teaching free classes on Ukrainian history and culture, and organizing fundraiser events for Ukraine. 

Voloshyna is also the founding artistic director of the Indiana Slavic Choir, a creative community that unites undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the Bloomington community in a shared interest in Slavic and East European polyphonic music traditions. 

Listen to Singing for Ukraine on WFIU’s Inner States 

Voloshyna has also devoted her expertise and leadership to the Ukrainian Studies Organization, Folklore Student Association, and Graduate and Professional Student Government. 

“Iryna has played a key role in helping IU respond to the Ukraine war in a way that combines research excellence, aesthetic and artistic response, humanitarian values, and service to society,” Pravina Shukla, director of Voloshyna's Ph.D. research committee, wrote in her letter of recommendation. She went on to express admiration for Valoshyna’s outgoing personality, intellectual dexterity, drive, enthusiasm, and passion. 

Most recently, Voloshyna was chosen to be the only representative from Ukraine, and the first-ever representative from the U.S., for the UNESCO Global Network of Facilitators project, in which she collaborates to ensure that local communities, state authorities, and UNESCO share the same visions and purposes in recognizing and safeguarding the world’s traditional cultural practices.