Building a Wikimedia research community in Ukraine: a project recap – Diff
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Between June 2025 and March 2026, Wikimedia Ukraine ran a project aimed at connecting Ukrainian researchers studying Wikipedia and related projects – with each other, with the Ukrainian Wikimedia community, and with the international Wikimedia research community. We’ve already
written about the project’s centerpiece
: a one-day conference in Kyiv on November 15, 2025. This post steps back to describe the wider effort the conference was part of.
Wikipedia is, among other things, a fascinating research subject. Ukrainian scholars – across both STEM and the humanities – study it from many angles, but before this project there was no organized space for them to meet, share work, or connect with the Wikimedia movement. Creating that space was the project’s main goal, made possible by a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation through the Wikimedia Research Fund.
How the project unfolded
In June 2025 we launched a public call for researchers working on or interested in Wikimedia topics, and started preparing the conference.
Registration for the conference opened in September 2025 and closed in mid-October with nearly 80 sign-ups, around 30 of whom applied to present. The event itself gathered over 80 people, split roughly evenly between Kyiv and online, with 30 short talks spanning disciplines from computer science to history. We covered the day in a
separate Diff post
, and
a full recording
is available on YouTube.
A moment from the conference (
photo
by Atoly, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The conference was organized in partnership with two major Ukrainian universities – Kyiv Aviation Institute National University and Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics.
In the words of Mariana Senkiv, head of the conference’s organizing committee:
“Ever since I first learned about the international community of researchers studying Wikimedia projects, I was inspired by the idea of bringing together researchers in Ukraine as well as those abroad who work on Ukrainian Wikimedia topics. Over time, it became clear that this required concrete steps. Together with the team at Wikimedia Ukraine, we developed a project proposal, and thanks to the support of the Wikimedia Foundation, we were able to make this initiative happen.
We brought together a team of motivated people, started organizing online events, and gradually built a community while preparing for a larger milestone – the conference. The peak of this journey was November 15, 2025, when we successfully held the first conference for Wikimedia researchers in Ukraine. For me, as the head of the organizing committee, it was one of the most important and demanding days of my professional life. What stood out most was the sense of connection – meeting people who share this research interest, engaging in meaningful discussions, and feeling that this work truly matters.
We are now finalizing the conference proceedings – a challenging process for a small team, but an important outcome. Earlier, it often felt necessary to explain why building a research community around Wikimedia projects matters. Now, it feels like this is increasingly understood.
Apart from the conference, we hosted six monthly online webinars between July 2025 and February 2026. They served three connected purposes: presenting Ukrainian researchers’ work to the Wikimedia community, bringing international Wikimedia research to a Ukrainian audience, and linking scholars with active editors. Each event drew 10–20 participants live, with recordings published afterwards.
The full program:
July 3, 2025
— Carolina Coimbra Vieira on using Wikipedia to track migration flows during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
August 5, 2025
— Mykola Trokhymovych on knowledge manipulation in Ruwiki, a pro-Kremlin clone of Russian Wikipedia
September 22, 2025
— Laura Kurek on the experiences of English Wikipedia contributors maintaining articles about the Russia-Ukraine war
October 30, 2025
— a practical introduction to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and research tools like PetScan and the Wikidata Query Service for researchers
December 20, 2025
— Andrii Boida on historical biographies on Wikipedia
February 13, 2026
— Ira Riaboshtan on information attacks and narratives about Wikipedia on social media
Check our
project page on Meta for more details and links
Members of the conference’s program & organizing committees: from left to right, Oleksii Boldyriev, Mariana Senkiv, Viacheslav Mamon, Nataliia Lastovets, Anton Protsiuk (
photo
by Nesanya, CC0)
What continues
The grant period ended in March 2026, but the work doesn’t end with it. We are finalizing the conference proceedings and staying in touch with the research community – including by organizing new online events, like a recent presentation of Wikipedia readability research by Mykola Trokhymovych, and encouraging participation in international events like Wiki Workshop.
Wikimedia Ukraine will keep supporting this community through other programs. The closest is “Open Knowledge: Wikimedia & Research in the CEE Region”, a conference co-organized with Wikimedia Polska in October 2026, in partnership with the University of Silesia and with support from the Wikimedia CEE Hub. Read more in the
CEE newsletter
and keep an eye on further updates about registration, program submissions, and scholarships.
If you are a researcher interested in Wikimedia topics and want to be in touch, write to us at
edu@wikimedia.org.ua
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Photo credits
Wikimedia Ukraine research conference Nov 2025 68
Atoly for Wikimedia Ukraine
CC BY-SA 4.0
Organising_team._Scientific_Wikipedian_Conference_in_Kyiv_offline._7
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