Hrymych, Maryna

Maryna Hrymych is a Ukrainian scholar and novelist. She has a Ph.D. in Philology and History (Candidate of Philology, Doctor of History). Editor in Chief of the Publishing House Duliby. Producer of the literary project Lyuba Klymenko. Member of the Writers Union of Ukraine, member of the Ukrainian Association of Regional Ethnography. Leading researcher of the Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

Maryna Hrymych was born on April 4, 1961 in Kyiv. Her father, Will Hrymych, was a translator, member of the Writers Union of Ukraine. Her mother, Halyna Hrymych, was a professor of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Maryna's grandfather, Hryhoriy Hrymych, was a journalist and writer. He worked in the newspaper "Hudok" in Moscow together with Il'f, Petrov, and Zoshchenko.

In 1983 Maryna Hrymych graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of Philology, Chair of Slavonic Studies. As a student Hrymych published her first translations from Slovenian, Serbian-Croat and Macedonian languages. At that time her first poems were published as well in Dnipro and Zhovten literary magazines. In 1990 she obtained Ph.D. in Philology (Candidate Ph.D.) from the Institute of Art History, Folkloristics and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Social Republic. In 1991-1995, she worked as an Academic Secretary and Deputy Head of the International School of Ukrainian Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Hrymych started her academic career as an ethnographer and folklorist at the M. T. Rylskyi Institute of Art History, Folkloristics and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. During her work at the International School of Ukrainian Studies developed methodology for teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. At the Department of History of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv she taught ethnology and social anthropology. Her cross-disciplinary Ph.D. thesis (Doctorate Ph.D.) on customary law relates to three scientific fields – ethnology, history and law. Between 1996 and 2006 she was an Associate Professor and later Professor of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of History. In 2001-2006, Hrymych was the head of the Ethnology and Regional Studies of the Department. In 2004 she obtained her Ph.D. in History (Doctorate Ph.D.). In 2004 Maryna Hrymych founded and took the lead of the publishing house Duliby specializing in modern Ukrainian literature and scientific works of ethnological character. In 2004 and 2005 Duliby was awarded a number of prizes of the Lviv Publishers Forum.

Hrymych is an experienced field-worker – she conducted ethnological and anthropological field work throughout Ukraine and in a number of other countries.

In 2008-2010, she was a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, and together with other professors of the Kule Folklore Centre, taught Ukrainian Folklore courses.

Maryna Hrymych is the author of 4 books, 2 textbooks, 8 novels, and a number of essays. She edited 7 scholarly publications, and initiated, compiled and edited 5 collections of articles. She is a prize-winner of the All-Ukrainian Literary Competition Koronatsiya Slova (special awards in 2000, 2001, first prize in 2002 for novel Egoist). She was awarded the Taras Shevchenko Award (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) for her monograph Property Institution in the Customary Law Culture of the Ukrainians in the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries (2004).