Subcommunity Spotlight: Ukraine
The Subcommunity Spotlight blog series aims to raise awareness of the many vibrant subcommunities within The Carpentries and highlight their activities. A brings together a subset of the broader Carpentries community. It may be local (e.g., a university-based Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., The Carpentries in Africa), or special interest-driven (e.g., HPC Carpentry, Carpentries-es, CarpentriesOffline). The series aims to foster connections among members, whether they live in the same region, speak a common language, or share similar interests. To learn more or get involved in a subcommunity, join the #subcommunity channel on Slack or reach out via email at community@carpentries.org. If you lead a subcommunity and would like to be featured in a future edition of this series, we’d love to hear from you!
The Carpentries in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Carpentries is a subcommunity within The Carpentries, focusing on supporting learners and Instructors by translating teaching materials into Ukrainian. The subcommunity is made up of Ukrainian researchers at different institutions in Ukraine and across the globe. It was initiated in 2022 after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine in order to help Ukrainian researchers who need to collaborate remotely because of being either internally displaced within Ukraine or refugees abroad.
By increasing access to foundational coding and data skills, the community enables Ukrainian researchers and learners to participate more fully in open, collaborative science. Such training in open science practices contributes to the implementation of the Ukrainian Open Science plan, adopted in October 2022. But for Ukraine, building an active Carpentries subcommunity means more than just learning foundational data and coding skills. In the current context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, it also means the ability to share data and analysis about the impact of Russia’s aggression on Ukrainian society, economics, education, ecology, etc. By working on GitHub, researchers could preserve this data and keep it accessible in case institutional data storage facilities suffer power outages or damage from Russian military attacks.
Meeting on the fourth Friday of each month, the Ukrainian Carpentries provides a space for sharing knowledge, strengthening connections, and growing local capacity. Some earlier highlights include the May 2024 report on their activities and the “Software Carpentry for Ukraine” presentation at the UK–Ukraine Networking and Research Twinning Showcase 2025, reflecting their ongoing commitment to inclusive and accessible teaching.
How You Can Contact This Subcommunity
Email: obk1@st-andrews.ac.uk Slack: #local-ukrainian Contact person: Olexandr Konovalov
Blog Posts and Other Media Highlighting The Subcommunity
- Ukrainian Carpentries Community - Ukrainian Version
- Ukrainian Carpentries Community - English Version
- Контроль версій за допомогою Git
- Ukrainian Glosario page
- Ukrainian Carpentries Translation Guide
- Translating Software Carpentry lessons into Ukrainian language: a status update
- Feedback from training events:
- В Острозькій академії відбувся весняний семінар комп’ютерної школи
- Ефективне співробітництво за допомогою Git та GitHub: досвід фахівця
- Lecturer of the Department of Computer Science and Information Technologies participated in the seminar “Version Control with GIT” under the program “Research Software Camp: Careers and Skills in Research Software”
Social Media Highlight
Next subcommunity meeting
The community meets on the 4th Friday of each month at 16:00 Ukrainian time. The next joint meeting for The Carpentries in Ukraine will be held on 23 January, 14:00 UTC. Sign up here!