Ukraine textiles history expert Tatiana Perga visits university

The textile industry’s historic links with refugees forced to flee their home countries due to war have been brought into sharp focus by the story of Ukrainian Visiting Research Fellow Tatiana Perga.

Having left Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in early 2022, Tatiana’s interest in textiles, recycling and environmental history chimed with the University’s Dr Rebecca Gill, Dr Wendy Wiertz and Dr Claire Barber’s own research and studies in Humanitarian Handicrafts.

Tatiana recently visited the University to speak at the Making Known seminar hosted at Holocaust Centre North (HCN), during which she reflected on the use of textiles by Jewish women in Ukraine at the end of the Russian Empire and the beginning of the Soviet Union. Tatiana also attended the Zero Waste: Enabling the Circular Economy conference, organised by the Huddersfield Business School, which highlighted the benefits and challenges of enabling the circular economy and demonstrating its relationship to the ambition of ‘zero-waste.

Tatiana’s expertise is in the history of textiles in the Soviet Union, in particular her native Ukraine during the Communist era, and the contemporary importance of recycling and sustainable development. 

“There are a lot of resonances between Tatiana’s research and the work of Holocaust Centre North, their collections and refugee history,” says Dr Gill. “HCN are very innovative in the way they respond to Holocaust history, and with Tatiana’s extensive knowledge of Jewish women working in textiles in Ukraine before World War Two there was an opportunity to give something new to the Centre’s work.

“Tatiana has looked at the role of Jewish women in textile recycling in Ukraine. Jewish people were disenfranchised, marginalised and existed within a subsistence economy. She has a wealth of material from Jewish women in Ukraine before the Holocaust in the 1930s, and has done an economic survey from her statistics.”

Tatiana, who visited Huddersfield from her current base of Heidelberg University, greatly enjoyed her visit and said, "I felt very welcomed by the University and its large, friendly family of European researchers. As a researcher from Ukraine, visiting Huddersfield was important and useful. I am so grateful to receive this opportunity and for the support for Ukrainian researchers. 

"I really liked the Holocaust Centre North, its concept, its exposition as well as its activities to disseminate knowledge among residents especially schoolchildren and young people.

"At the Making Known research workshop, where I presented the history of textile use in the early Soviet Union, I was able to share my ideas and discuss a wide range of interesting issues, as well as compare situations in Western countries. I hope that this will open up prospects for further cooperation between Ukrainian and British scientists in the field of culture of production, consumption and processing of textiles, as well as its presentation in art in different spaces and times."