2026 Herbert and Violetta Halpert Research Fellowship Recipients

Building on the success of last year’s inaugural research fellowship, this year the Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA) Committee decided to grant two awards as part of the Herbert and Violetta Halpert Research Fellowship program.  

The first of this year’s recipients is Maryna Chernyavska, Digital Archivist at the University of Alberta. Maryna recently finished her tenure as Acting Archivist at the U of A and also served full-time as Folklore Archivist at the University’s Kule Folklore Centre from January 2017 - December 2022.

As an interdisciplinary PhD student at the U of A, Maryna’s research focuses on folklife archives, like MUNFLA, across both North America and Europe. On Friday, June 19^th, Maryna gave an informal presentation to the Department of Folklore on her “Reflections on being a [folklore] archivist.” Click to view event photographs.

Our second recipient, Sarah Perry, is a current PhD candidate in the Department of History at McMaster University. Sarah is also Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Written in the Waves, an independent online student journal dedicated to female research on the Atlantic, particularly in the fields of history, folklore, and anthropology.

Sarah’s PhD research explores the intersection of environment, race, and cultural identity on Newfoundland mining communities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries with Bell Island and Buchans serving as regional case studies.

Sarah’s first phase of MUNFLA research was conducted during the week of July 20-24, 2026. She plans to return to the Folklore and Language Archive during the upcoming fall semester; a presentation of her research will be scheduled for that time. Stay tuned for further details!