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Department Head

Associate Professor

B.A. (Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine)
M.A. (Alberta) 
Ph.D. (Alberta)

mlesiv@mun.ca
709-864-4417
ED4049, Education Bldg.

Dr. Mariya Lesiv’s research interests include folklore and politics, belief and religious folklife, and migration and diasporic folklife. She arrived to ������Ƶ University from the University of Alberta, where she completed her PhD and worked at the Kule Folklore Centre being actively engaged in fieldwork and publication projects related to Ukrainian diaspora culture.

Lesiv's book, , was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2013. The book illustrates how a new religion - shaped by creative and contested interpretations of a distant past - becomes a vehicle for proposing an alternative vision for a nation in both Ukraine and the diaspora during politically turbulent times.

Lesiv is a recipient of a 2025-2027 Social Studies and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant for her current ethnographic project "Heritage and Trauma: Ukrainian War Migrants in the Host-Region of Newfoundland."  Through a novel case study of Ukrainian war migrants to the island of Newfoundland, this project explores the role of traditional heritage in coping with trauma while building a new sense of home in a non-representative diasporic setting, with a particular focus on the role of local hosts. 

Lesiv was previously a recipient of a 2017-2019 Social Studies and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant for her fieldwork-based project "Host-Region: Post-Socialist Diaspora Communities in Newfoundland," devoted to immigrants to the island from the former Socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  The project focused on the immigrants' individual and collective identities as formed and communicated via personal experience narratives, creative and expressive culture, and belief.

In 2019-2023, Dr. Lesiv served as President-Elect, President, and Past-President of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada/l'Association canadienne d'ethnologie et de folklore (FSAC).  She also serves as President of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association (SEEFA) for two terms (2020-2024).

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Select Publications

Edited Journal Issue:

2021. Co-edited with Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby, Special Issue I: Folklore and Protest, Folklorica:  Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 25.  

Articles:

2025. with Robert Glenn Howard, "Cursed Russians and Armed Saints: 'Angry Folklore' and the Ethics of Precarity in Response to the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine." Journal of American Folklore 138(547): 3-33.

2025 [2022] (invited). "Folk Belief and Religion in Ukraine:  Creating the Charisma of Place."  In The Oxford Handbook of Slavic and East European Folklore, edited by Margaret Beissinger.  Oxford University Press. 

2023. with Wyatt Shibley, "Domestic Ethnicity:  The Lebanese and Ukrainian Diasporas in the Host-Region of Newfoundland."  In Migrations and Diasporas:  Generating Spaces for Inclusion Through Interdisciplinary Practices, edited by William Arrocha & Elena Xeni, pp. 237-251.   Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.

2021.  "Co-Editor's Introduction to the Folklorica Special Issue: Folklore and Protest I,"  Folklorica 25: iii-xv. 

2021.  "Not All Quiet on the Culinary Front:  The Battle Over Borshch in Ukraine." Folklorica 25: 58-77                                                                                       

2021.  "Host-Region: Safe Folklore and the Negotiation of Difference in Post-Socialist Diasporas in Newfoundland."  Anthropologica 63 (2): 1-27     

2019. "I know history': Experience, Belief, and Politics in the Post-Socialist Diaspora."  Western Folklore 78 (2/3): 119-150.

2018. “Hope for Ukraine, Fall of America and Putin the Savior: The Supernatural in Ukrainian and Russian Media and Vernacular Contexts.” Journal of American Folklore 131: 30-52.

2017. “Blood Brothers or Blood Enemies: Ukrainian Pagans’ Beliefs and Responses to the Ukraine-Russia Crisis.” Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Paganism Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Paganism, edited by Kathryn Rountree, pp. 133-155. London: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. 

2016. ““Окрім політики: Естетичне в українському рідновірстві []. Ukraina moderna [Modern Ukraine: International Intellectual Periodical],  (In Ukainian).

2016. “Der moderne ukrainische Paganismus [Modern Ukrainian Paganism].” Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West [Religion and Society in East and West] 2 (44): 12-14. (In German).

2014. “How to Conduct Rituals: Culture Makers in Soviet Ukraine and the Ukrainian Diaspora.” Proverbs in Motion: A Festschrift in Honour of Bohdan Medwidsky. Ed. Andriy Nahachewsky and Maryna Chernyavska, pp. 222-240. Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.

2013. “Ukrainian Paganism and Syncretism: ‘This is Indeed Ours!’.” Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Ed. Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson. Durham: Acumen Publishing.128-145.

2012. “Prayer and Power: A New Women’s Tradition in a Ukrainian Village.” Ethnologies: Journal of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada 34.1-2 (2012): 227-249.

2009. “Glory to Dazhboh (Sun-god) or to All Native Gods?: Monotheism and Polytheism in Contemporary Ukrainian Paganism.” Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 11. (2): 197-222.

2007. “From Ritual Object to Art Form: The Ukrainian Easter Egg Pysanka In Its Canadian Context.” Folklorica: Journal of Slavic and Eastern European Folklore Studies Association 12: 1-32.