Ms. Maryna Kravets

Obituary

Maryna Kravets, passed away on September 13, 2026. She was born in Pavlohrad, Ukraine on December 1, 1967.

In 1992 she received a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours at Dnipropetrovsk State University. There she studied with prominent Ukrainian historians Yuriy Mytsyk and Serhii Plokhy. In 1993 she moved to Canada to engage in graduate work in Ottoman history at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations of the University of Toronto. She became proficient in Modern and Ottoman Turkish, as well as in Arabic and Persian. In the course of her dissertation research she concentrated on the history of the Crimean Khanate. As an authority on the Crimea, Ukrainian-Ottoman relations, and the early modern history of the Black Sea region, she played a prominent research role in the Hrushevsky Translation Project of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. In this massive project devoted to preparing an English-language translation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s multivolume History of Ukraine-Rus’ she made invaluable contributions to six of the ten volumes.

While still in Ukraine she co-edited several volumes of seventeenth-century documents connected with the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks. In Canada she authored numerous articles primarily on the social history of the Crimean Khanate. Over the years she provided great service to the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations as a research assistant and bibliographer. In addition, she was a frequent sessional lecturer and instructional assistant at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Her courses spanned many topics in Islamic and Middle Eastern history.

In 2023 she was awarded the Peterson Literary Fund’s Grand Prix for Excellence in Translation for her leading role as co-translator into Turkish of Paul Robert Magocsi’s Ukraine: An Illustrated History.

In addition to being a tireless and conscientious scholar, Maryna Kravets was always willing to share in her vast knowledge of Ottoman and Ukrainian history. She was much appreciated and loved for her willingness to always go the extra mile on behalf of her friends and colleagues.

Вічная памʼять! Memory eternal!

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