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Wikimedia research conference in Ukraine 2025

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Wikimedia research conference in Ukraine 2025
“Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the focus of scientific research” was a research community-building conference in Ukraine held in a hybrid format (offline in Kyiv and online) in November 2025 and supplemented with online events before and after.

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Conference proceedings

In 2025 and early 2026, Wikimedia Ukraine implemented a Wikimedia research community-building project in Ukraine. We organized a national conference in Kyiv and online on November 15, 2025, as well as a set of supporting online activities before and after the conference.

Project plan

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The conference “Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the focus of scientific research” convened Ukrainian researchers studying Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects on November 15, 2025. Its aims were to connect researchers with each other, with the international Wikimedia research community, and with the Ukrainian Wikimedia community, as well as to present their work to the Ukrainian Wikimedia community and the general public.

The one-day conference featured 30 presentations and discussions from researchers across various disciplines, both STEM and humanities.

We gathered over 40 participants offline and close to 40 online, including by inviting researchers from other countries to present their work.

For more info about the conference, see its program (Ukrainian original / machine-translated English version). You can also see its recording and read a brief recap on Diff.

To build momentum and community before the conference and sustain them afterwards, we hosted six monthly online webinars around the project themes (presenting Ukrainian researchers’ work on Wikimedia to the Wikimedia community and the wider public, presenting international research to Ukrainian researchers, connecting scholars with the Wikimedia community).

Conference group photos

Project progress timeline

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Overall
  • In June 2025 we launched a public call to gather researchers studying in Wikimedia or interested in the topic. So far 29 people joined the network.
  • Since July 2025 we held several online events for the Ukrainian Wikimedia community and the research community (research presentation and other webinars). Events were attended by 10-20 people live each and are available to watch on-demand as recordings.
  • In September 2025 we launched registration for the conference, to be held on November 15th. Key links: announcement, information sheet, registration form
  • Registration closed in mid-October 2025 with almost 80 people signing up to participate in-person and online; ~30 of them applied to present their research.
  • In November 2025 we organized the conference itself. It gathered over 80 people, roughly equally offline and online. The conference included 30 research presentations and discussions. A recording is available, and the organizers started working on publishing conference proceedings in early 2026.
  • At the end of 2025 and in early 2025, the organizers finalized conference proceedings, held two more online events, and continued to keep in touch with Ukraine's Wikimedia research community by inviting them to other events, including WikiWorkshop in March 2026.
  • The project concluded in March 2026, but Wikimedia Ukraine will continue working on advancing its goals through other programs, such as the conference Open Knowledge: Wikimedia & Research in the CEE Region organized in October 2026 by Wikimedia Polska and Wikimedia Ukraine, in partnership with the University of Silesia and with support from the Wikimedia CEE Hub.
The list of online events held within the project
  1. Presentation of the study “Wikipedia as a Tool for Tracking Mass Migration Flows: Insights from the Russian Invasion of Ukraine” by Carolina Coimbra Vieira (July 3, 2025; recording)
  2. Presentation of the study “Characterizing Knowledge Manipulation in a Russian Wikipedia Fork” by Mykola Trokhymovych (August 5, 2025; recording)
  3. Presentation of the study “Wikipedia in Wartime: Experiences of Wikipedians Maintaining Articles About the Russia-Ukraine War” by Laura Kurek (September 22, 2025; recording)
  4. Introduction into Wikipedia, Wikidata and elementary wiki research tools (PetScan, Wikidata Query Service) for researchers (October 30, 2025; recording)
  5. Webinar “Historical biographies on Wikipedia: experience of a Wikipedian and scholar” by Andrii Boida (December 20, 2025; recording)
  6. Presentation of the study “Information attacks and narratives about Wikipedia on social media” by Ira Riaboshtan (February 13, 2026; recording)

Organizers

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The project was organized by Wikimedia Ukraine thanks to grant support from the Wikimedia Foundation through the Wikimedia Research Fund.

The core organizing team included Mariana Senkiv, Anton Protsiuk and Natalia Lastovets. The organizing team worked with a range of advisors and supporting staff members.

The conference was organized in partnership with two Ukrainian universities, Kyiv Aviation Institute and Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics.

Learn more & stay in touch

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If you'd like to join the project or have any questions:

You can also read a recap of the project on Diff.

Note: the project's primary working language was Ukrainian. However, some conference sessions and online events were held in English with Ukrainian interpretation & we were sharing learnings with the international community in English (e.g. through Diff posts).

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