Olena Shevchenko

Biography

Olena is the Head of the Archaeological Collections Management & Research Department at Odesa Archaeological Museum, where she oversees the curation, preservation, and study of artifacts in the museum’s collection.

Currently, Olena is on secondment in London, working on a research project at King’s College London’s Department of Classics. Her primary task is creating a trilingual version of the Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Region (INBS) database, which involves translating inscriptions and developing a database of technical terms using Oxygen XML in Ukrainian. As well as this, Olena is currently researching Sarmatian funerary practices, building on her PhD studies.

Despite being abroad, Olena maintains an active role in supporting the Odesa Archaeological Museum. This includes consulting on new exhibitions, assisting with grant applications, advising on artifact preservation, and supporting colleagues working with catalogues. A significant part of her role involves mentoring junior colleagues in all aspects of museum work, from research methodologies to collection management. This dual position allows Olena to bridge academic research with practical museum operations and gives her the opportunity to foster international collaboration and knowledge exchange in the field of archaeology and museum studies.

At the British Museum
During her time at the British Museum, Olena was based in based in the Greece and Rome Department and her UK partner placement was spent at Lincoln Museum and University of Nottingham Museum.

Olena’s participation in the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.