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On May 30, 2025 Yuri Yanchyshyn presented a talk at the American Insitute for Conservation Yearly Meeting, entitled “Furthering Conservation in Wartime Ukraine.” In his talk he introduces the 20c history of conservation science and the treatment of objects in Ukraine, as a necessary context for understanding the post WWII Soviet era and today’s efforts to preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage during the current war.

On January 27, 2025, Yuri Yanchyshyn gave the Annual General Meeting Talk at the International Institute for Conservation in London, entitled Conservation in Wartime Ukraine - Context, Challenges, Opportunities. This presentation, given by an AIC Wooden Artifacts conservator, Fulbright Specialist, and Scholar to Ukraine before the war, introduced the attendees to the objects and dedicated individuals who cared for this heritage while providing an integral 20c historical context. It concluded by assessing the wartime situation today and outlined pathways for the future.

“Yuri Yanchyshyn, a conservator of wooden artifacts and a researcher and scholar, has been volunteering with the project. He recalled being “dumbfounded” the first time he entered a wooden tserkva. The churches are an example of vernacular, or folk architecture, he said, built by local parishioners and craftsmen. Many have no nails and are held together with either pegs or mortise and tenon joinery. “