Iryna Demianiuk

Cheesemaker, dairy technologist and Fellow of the Academy of Cheese, Iryna has trained 3,000+ students and champions Ukraine’s cheese culture at home and abroad.

Iryna Demianiuk

Cheesemaker, dairy technologist and Fellow of the Academy of Cheese, Iryna has trained 3,000+ students and champions Ukraine’s cheese culture at home and abroad.

Advancing Cheesemaking Through Science & Education

Iryna Demianiuk is a cheesemaker, dairy technologist, cheese educator, Fellow of the Academy of Cheese, and founder of Cheese School by Iryna Demianiuk. She has more than 17 years of hands-on cheesemaking experience and has been teaching cheesemaking professionally since 2015.

Over the course of her career, Iryna has developed her own cheese recipes and has contributed to the revival of lost Ukrainian cheesemaking traditions, including independently reconstructing the production technology of Bakshtein, a historic Ukrainian cheese. Since 2015, she has trained more than 3,000 students, from aspiring artisan cheesemakers and entrepreneurs to experienced cheesemakers and dairy industry professionals.

Alongside her educational work, Iryna is Head of the Guild of Artisan Cheesemakers of Ukraine and an organiser of Ukraine Cheese Awards — Ukraine’s national cheese competition and artisan cheese festival. Through these activities, she works to develop professional standards, support artisan cheesemakers and promote cheese culture in Ukraine.
Iryna actively promotes Ukrainian cheese and Ukrainian cheesemakers both nationally and internationally, working to bring greater recognition to Ukraine’s developing cheese culture within the wider European cheese community.

Her professional interests extend beyond cheesemaking technology to cheese history and culture. Iryna writes about cheese and is particularly interested in how the history of cheesemaking connects with wider human history, and how traditional and contemporary cheese cultures reflect the history, geography and culture of different countries.
She also organises educational tours to traditional and artisan cheesemakers across Europe, giving participants the opportunity to experience authentic cheese production first-hand. During these visits, Iryna documents cheesemaking processes through video, sharing production techniques, knowledge and traditions with the wider cheesemaking community and incorporating this experience into her educational work.

Her approach to cheese education brings together hands-on cheesemaking, dairy science, history, culture and international professional exchange, helping students understand cheese not simply as a product, but as the result of milk, technology, people, place and tradition.