Iryna Ivankovych started her work at St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics, USA in 2008 and became a member of the Association’s Board of Directors in 2017. She was elected President in 2018 and re-elected in 2023. She is a member of the Board of St. Sophia Association in Rome as well as the Director of the Josyf Slipyj Research Center
Dr. Ivankovych is a linguist, translator, and literary critic. Born in Pidvolochysk, Ternopil region, she graduated from Warsaw University (Institute of Applied Linguistics) with an M.A. in translation and English philology. In 2012, she defended her doctoral dissertation with the highest honors (summa cum laude) in the field of sociolinguistics at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. She has served as a professor of English as a Second Language in universities and colleges in Poland and the United States of America.
She has translated many vital books into Ukrainian, among them Jaroslav Pelikan’s Confessor between East and West. A Portrait of Ukrainian Cardinal Josyf Slipyj (2015), Morris West’s novel Shoes of the Fisherman (2019), Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (2021), To the Light of the Resurrection through the Thorns of the Catacombs (2014), and blessed Vasyl Velychkovsky’s CSSR History of the Miraculous Icon of the Mother of God of Perpetual Help (2009). She has compiled numerous books and anthologies of literary works about Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi and Josyf Slipyj and edited the multilingual edition of the Testament of Patriarch Josyf Slipyj (2022) and From Sambor to Saskatoon: memories of Fr. Volodymyr Iwaszko for the youth (2022). She is the author of the two-volume book Patriarch Josyf Slipyj and Literature, which was awarded the “Best Book of the 2016 Publishers’ Forum” in Lviv.
Dr. Ivankovych is the founder of the ESL. Ukraine charity platform, which houses such projects as the ESL Charity Summer School in Zazdrist, Ukraine, the birthplace of Josyf Slipyj, for orphans, displaced persons, children of the Ukraine military men and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church Seminarians as well as the School for the ESL Christian Camp Counsellors; and ESLforONL (English for Odesa Naval Lyceum). She is the author of more than thirty scholarly articles in Ukrainian, Polish, and English in linguistics, literary studies, and history. She is a corresponding member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA (NTSh.). The recipient of the Volunteer with Ukraine in the Heart" medal as well as the Ukrainian World Coordination Council
medal.