Introduction
Since the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022, Ukrainian museums and heritage institutions have faced massive threats. In Ukraine and across the diaspora, museum and heritage professionals, artefacts, collections, and bodies of knowledge about heritage and history are at risk. To meet these urgent needs, UK-trained or UK-based museum and other cultural heritage professionals are prepared to share high-quality expertise and unique academic insights, regardless of university or institutional affiliation.
This article introduces a pathway to provide Ukrainian museum and heritage professionals with mentoring from peers through the new non-hierarchical Mentoring Initiative for Museums. It is a partnership between the UK branch of the NGO Science for Ukraine (S4U), which supports the Ukrainian academic community in Russia’s war; Ukraine and UK branches of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a global NGO and professional membership association with over 60,000 individual and 4,000 institutional members in 139 countries and territories; and the Institute for Historical Research (IHR), the UK’s national centre for history.
Growing risks to the Ukrainian heritage sector
The war has intensified long-standing threats to Ukrainian heritage and the professionals charged with protecting it.
Since 2014, illegal excavations, looting, and deliberate destruction have been documented in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Cultural heritage professionals have experienced violence in areas of Ukraine under military occupation. This situation has worsened since Russia’s full-scale attack started in 2022. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recognised the destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage and identity as an element of Russia’s genocidal policy in 2024. As of 30 September 2026, UNESCO has confirmed that over 563 cultural sites in Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed. As damage to ‘Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’ and Saint Sophia, Kyiv, demonstrates, UNESCO World Heritage status offers no protection.
Russia’s efforts to ostensibly preserve Ukrainian cultural heritage also constitute cultural erasure, or a systematic effort to break Ukrainian historical monuments’ connection to their communities of origin. Common strategies include:
- Offensive renaming. Original Crimean Tatar placenames have been replaced with meaningless alternatives.
- Distortive ‘restoration’. UNESCO found that Russian efforts to ‘restore’ war damage to the Bakhchysarai Khan’s Palace complex in Crimea, which had been nominated as a World Heritage Site, ‘pose a real threat of destroying the historical and cultural value of the monument’ to a ‘criminal’ extent. This is one example of many.
- Stripping sites. As of June 2026, an estimated 1.7 million artworks and artefacts had been stolen from temporarily occupied territories by Russian forces.
- Appropriating artworks and artefacts. Russian heritage professionals are currently registering objects, which belong to Ukrainian collections in temporarily occupied territories, in the State Catalogue of the Russian Museum Fund to assert Russian ownership over them.
Impact on Ukrainian museum and heritage professionals
Currently, in Ukraine, heritage professionals face personal danger, lack of training for emergency tasks, and severe resource shortages as they continue to scramble for sites to move collections to safety.
Staff retention in the sector is low, exacerbated by the impact of war: conscription, displacement, and casualties. As in all sectors, many heritage professionals have been drafted. Other professionals have been displaced or forced to migrate, seeking a new start elsewhere only to discover that they must adapt to different cultural and professional environments.
Investment in the training and retention of highly skilled cultural-heritage workers is critical to repairing and reopening sites, but salaries are falling below the living wage while inflation is increasing rapidly and staff shortages create knowledge gaps that are difficult to fill.
Despite empty galleries and the potential for attacks, Ukrainian museum and heritage professionals selflessly work to protect and evacuate collections, develop protocols for emergency situations, and keep their teams together.
At the same time, they are taking on increasing responsibility for working with visitors: addressing difficult topics, creating safe spaces for reflection on the realities of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, and encouraging people to think about their own roles and responsibilities in it. They facilitate engagement, supporting their communities through activities such as history classes, fundraisers, and exhibitions on the effects of war.
International support is essential to support Ukrainian museum and heritage professionals, facilitate their professional growth, and help prevent the irreversible loss of tangible and intangible heritage for future generations.
A case for Ukraine-UK peer mentoring in the heritage sector
Study after study has shown that heritage sites, museums, and their staff are among the most trusted institutions in many countries. In Ukraine, they are a success story for public communication and, as such, are essential to Ukraine’s reconstruction, empowerment and future path.
Evidence from other sectors demonstrates that remote peer-to-peer knowledge exchange can effectively mitigate immediate professional challenges while boosting local capacity, through initiatives including the UNESCO Mentorship Programme for African Heritage Professionals. These lessons can be harnessed to strengthen Ukraine’s academic capacity and its visibility and position in the international academic community by supporting its museum and heritage professionals.
The UK heritage sector is excellently positioned to offer such support. It is world-leading and has impressive convening power, not least due to the proliferation of well-regarded post-graduate courses in museum administration, archivist and librarianship methods, and curatorial and memory studies.
While individual UK museum professionals and heritage institutions have offered support to Ukrainian colleagues, there is a growing need for a focused national effort, one that delivers mutual benefit to individual, institutional, and national initiatives in Ukraine and the UK.
Attempts to develop a programme on a large scale have been frustrated by resource limitations, infrastructure challenges, and complexities of a rapidly shifting landscape. Now, Science for Ukraine UK is expanding its transformative programme for academics to support pairs of Ukraine-UK museum and heritage professionals, in partnership with ICOM Ukraine, ICOM UK, and the IHR.
Science for Ukraine UK’s academic mentoring programme
Science for Ukraine is an international NGO that supports Ukrainians conducting academic research in all fields – from the humanities and social sciences to math, engineering, business, and medicine. Like the European Research Council, it uses ‘science’ to refer to ‘scholarship’ in its broadest sense.
Its flagship activity in the UK – with generous support by the PushFar mentoring platform – is a well-established academic mentoring and twinning initiative. At the time of writing, Science for Ukraine UK has matched 400 pairs of mentees from Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora with UK-based mentors (with a waiting list of 80 mentees) and 42 twins, or pairs of Ukraine and UK higher education institutions. Some mentoring relationships are so productive that they have continued for years and generated significant research funding.
Until recently, Science for Ukraine UK has focused on supporting researchers affiliated with academic institutions. Currently, only two of its 400 registered mentors work in museums. Ukrainian museum professionals who have registered as mentees have been paired with UK-based academics who are in a relevant field of research, but without a museum affiliation or specialisation.
Mentoring Initiative for Museums
To remedy the situation, Science for Ukraine UK is launching the Mentoring Initiative for Museums, a parallel stream of mentoring opportunities in English. It is open to all at-risk, displaced, and refugee museum and professionals from Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora who have research expertise or are research-active in this area. This includes PhD students in museum studies and related fields; museum curators, working with collections related to art, natural history, technology, and other topics; conservators; and those in related roles at heritage sites.
The pilot will run in the 2026/27 academic year. Registration is open now for mentees and mentors. Members or former members of ICOM Ukraine will be prioritised as mentees in the first instance; however, the scheme is open to all cultural heritage professionals – whether scholars or practitioners. This project is also supported by the IHR.
Why initiate mentoring from the UK?
The Mentoring Initiative for Museums enables UK museum and cultural heritage professionals to support the needs of their colleagues from Ukraine by offering their high-quality expertise in service of:
1. Long-term capacity building within the Ukrainian heritage sector
The UK heritage sector is renowned for its world-leading training and expertise in museum studies.UK mentors with practical or academic experience can share insights in an equitable exchange, which may help Ukrainian peers to view alternative ways of considering and developing their roles and organisations within international contexts.
Ukraine has a highly active but complex heritage landscape, and museum structures may not equate to those in the UK. Professional knowledge exchange through a mentor/mentee relationship has the potential to make a significant contribution to Ukraine’s long-term recovery and transformation. Through such partnerships, participants can share expertise through the lens of the UK cultural heritage sector. They can signpost relevant resources across a wide field including organisational structures, policy development, collections management, conservation, exhibition planning, interpretation, and audience engagement.
2. Using decolonisation and trauma-informed practices to engage audiences
Museum practitioners in the UK and Ukraine possess different experiences of decolonisation and the ongoing efforts required to confront and address painful histories. Case studies of innovative and reimagined museums that respond to the realities of contemporary and historical conflict and violence can inspire new opportunities for therapeutic engagement with heritage by trauma-affected communities.
UK mentors with expertise in decolonisation, trauma-informed practices, cultural capability, community engagement and EDI can offer Ukrainian peers a safe space for reflection regarding the process of untangling centuries of colonial rule and hybrid identities. They can assist in challenging old mindsets.
Such work can be informed by the guidelines presented in Supporting Decolonisation in Museums: Focus on Ukraine, a freely available resource in both English and Ukrainian, initiated by the Ukrainian Institute and developed as a partnership project with ICOM UK, ICOM Ukraine and the Museums Association, supported by the British Council.
3. Preparing for reconstruction, restitution and justice
With war still raging, the primary focus of support for the cultural heritage sector in Ukraine is still a crisis response intended to stabilise damaged buildings and artefacts, evacuate collections, and compile inventories of objects and damage. After centuries of being dismissed as small and insignificant due to dominant Russian propaganda, the war means that Ukrainian cultural heritage is more visible than ever beyond the country’s national borders.
The destruction of heritage infrastructure has necessitated the reimagining of museum spaces within Ukraine as well as initiatives to prepare for post-war reconstruction, restitution and justice.
UK-based mentors with expertise in the prevention of trafficking of cultural objects, provenance research, restitution and repatriation campaigns, and the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols of 1954 and 1999, will be able to make a particularly valuable contribution towards preparing for post-war reconstruction. Those with experience in preparing master plans, rethinking museums, creating effective public communications, and curating exhibitions that display lost or reclaimed artefacts will also be welcomed.
Policy implications for the UK
Benefits to the UK are clear. This kind of programme will bring knowledge to the UK heritage actor. It will advance the UK’s cultural heritage-related policy aims as they relate to Ukraine. Culture is one of the 9 key pillars of the UK-Ukraine 100 Year Partnership Agreement, which specifically aims to ‘develop a long-term culture partnership’, including twinning. More broadly, the ongoing de-Russification and decolonisation of Ukrainian cultural heritage during wartime could serve as a model for other UK partner nations under threat.
Science for Ukraine UK’s Mentoring in Museums initiative will empower UK-based museum practitioners and their organisations to contribute directly and meaningfully to the resilience, renewal and future development of Ukraine’s cultural heritage sector. In return, the process of knowledge exchange will lead to a more nuanced understanding of the central role of museums and other cultural organisations as cornerstones of national identity and civil resilience during armed conflict – a fact recognised, for example, by the Finnish Government’s Security Strategy for Society, which notes:
Cultural heritage and sites considered part of national cultural assets play an important role in the preservation of individuals’ and communities’ identity and their sense of belonging. The information pools of cultural heritage and other cultural assets safeguard the nation’s memory, which cannot be restored once lost.
Since 2022, Ukrainian museum professionals and cultural heritage practitioners have not only safeguarded the nation’s memory; they have gained significant knowledge and practical experience in emergency preparedness and response, countering disinformation and propaganda, and combating the illicit trafficking of cultural property. Thus, insights from mentees can inform the UK’s policies on heritage protection and encourage more thorough emergency preparedness plans for before, during and after conflict.
In addition, this mentoring initiative will contribute towards the UK-Ukraine 100 Year Partnership Declaration, signed in 2025 by both governments to ‘deepen security ties and strengthen partnership for future generations’. The Declaration outlines ten key pillars of activity, including Pillar 9.4, which states:
We will encourage twinning across museums, galleries, theatres, opera houses, music venues, teams and associations – to exchange works, best practice, perform and compete together, and co-produce.
Pillar 9.8 also refers to cultural heritage protection and restoration:
The UK will facilitate training and educational exchanges for cultural professionals for the protection, preservation and restoration of Ukrainian cultural heritage endangered by Russian aggression. We also commit to work together to protect Ukrainian cultural heritage, prevent the illicit trafficking and looting of its cultural values, and counteract cultural erasure.
Policy implications for Ukraine
Science for Ukraine UK’s Mentoring Initiative for Museums is well positioned to deliver high-quality, sustained support to meet immediate professional development and capacity-building needs as they arise. This model of international mentoring and knowledge exchange has been shown to strengthen local expertise, inspire organisational reform and help raise professional standards which, in turn, have the ability to influence local and national policy through the ripple effect.
Policy frameworks are becoming more robust in Ukraine, providing a strong strategic foundation to guide culture, heritage, education and regional management, but they require sustained support to ensure they remain fit for purpose. RES-POL’s research, for example, directly shapes Ukraine’s Strategy of Cultural Priorities 2025–2030.
The Mentoring Initiative for Museums will also further Ukraine’s path to EU accession by supporting the implementation of reforms that align with the EU’s democratic laws and standards. Improvements in administrative structures has been singled out by the EU as a requirement for membership. Moreover, Ukraine’s participation in the EU as an equal partner will benefit its heritage sector in terms of streamlining and updating governance structures inherited from the Soviet era.
Conclusion
Including heritage professionals in one-to-one and cohort, non-hierarchical, participant-led initiatives such as the Mentoring Initiative for Museums can support transformational knowledge exchange regarding best practice and new ways of thinking about museums and cultural heritage. Mentors and mentees will benefit, as will their institutions and the Ukrainian and UK heritage sectors, enhancing cultural policy initiatives.
