On September 23, an online conversation took place focusing on Ukrainian cuisine as a component of identity — both in Ukraine and in the diaspora. The event brought together researchers, authors, and practitioners working with the history and contemporary meanings of Ukrainian gastronomy.

One of the key participants was Marianna Dushar — President of our NGO, food anthropologist, writer, and researcher of the culinary heritage of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. In her talk, she focused on cuisine as a daily practice of memory and a means of preserving identity in emigration, particularly through women’s knowledge, family recipes, and culinary archives.

The discussion also included scholars of Ukrainian gastronomic history working with a wide range of sources — from archival materials and ethnography to contemporary popular formats: Olena Braichenko, Liudmyla Herus-Baranovska, and Vsevolod Polishchuk. Each speaker offered their own perspective on cuisine as a historical source, a cultural code, and a space for the formation of communities. A separate segment of the event featured the presentation of interim research results by Iryna Mitnovych, Director of the Ukrainian Cultural Society, devoted to the phenomenon of Ukrainian cuisine in Canada and the formation of Ukrainian-Canadian identity.

The meeting took place within the framework of the research project Recipe for Preserving Identity, supported by the Shevchenko Foundation, and was held in connection with Ukrainian Heritage Month in Canada. The online format made it possible to bring together participants from different countries and time zones — from Vancouver to Kyiv — around a shared conversation on cuisine as an important part of cultural experience and memory.