Irmgard Hein Ellingson was one of the founders of the Bukovina Society of the Americas (BSA) in 1988 and is presently an international board director. A longtime member of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR), she has served on the translations and folklore committees and is now an editorial committee member. From 1993 until 1997, she was U.S. representative for the quarterly magazine Wandering Volhynians (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada).

The Bukovina Germans in Kansas: A 200-Year History of the Lutheran Swabians was published as Volume 6 in the Fort Hays (Kansas) State University Ethnic Heritage Series in 1987. In 1994 she translated and published Illischestie, A Rural Parish in Bukovina: Primary Source Material for Family History, an unpublished manuscript compiled by the late Johann Christian Dressler. She is currently working on a translation of Dressler's book Chronik der Bukowiner Landgemeinde Illischestie.

She has translated the 1895 Family History Register of Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Grafton, Iowa, which surveys the congregation's roots in Pommern, the Neumark, and other regions, and is preparing it for publication in conjunction with the town's 125th anniversary in 2003.

Her shorter works have appeared in the Eastern European Genealogist, Galizien German Descendants Newsletter, the A.H.S.G.R. Journal and Clues, Wandering Volhynians, Der Suedostdeutsche (Munich, Germany), and the Kaindl-Archiv (Stuttgart, Germany) and the 1989 Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual European Studies Conference (Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA).

She has addressed the 1993, 1996 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 FEEFHS conventions and annual conventions of AHSGR, BSA, the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, and the Polish Genealogical Society of America. She has also spoken to various state and local historical groups. She became the 4th President of FEEFHS for a two year term (2002-2003). She served as the Bukovina Society's representative on the program committee for the 2002 FEEFHS event which was sponsored by the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society, the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe, the Eastern European Genealogical Society (EEGS), the Bukovina Society, and FEEFHS.

Irmgard's research experience includes work in German, Austrian, Czech, Canadian, and American archives. She holds undergraduate degrees in political science and history and a master's degree in ministry with a concentration upon congregational history. She is an associate of ministry intern serving in four Lutheran congregations in partnership with her husband Wayne, who is an ordained clergyman in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She is also an adjunct instructor of German at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa.

She has given the following lectures for presentation at prior FEEFHS International Conventions:

- Bukovina Immigration to North America and a brief history of the Bukovina Society of the Americas prepared for the Bukowinafest - Brasil 2001 held in Rio Negro and Parana; presented and published as Imigração bucovina para a América do Norte e breve história da Sociedade Bucovina das Américas, preparada para a Bucovinafest - Brasil 2001

- Bukovina Networking

- Galicia: A Multi-Ethnic Overview and Settlement History

- Volhynia and the EWZ Records (joint presentation with Dave Obee at Regina in 2002)

- Using the EWZ (1939-1945 German Repatriation Records)

-19th and 20th Century Volhynia: Historical Overview and Research Resources

-The Multi-Ethnic Eastern Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1785-1945

-The German Settlement in Galicia: Historical Overview and Research

-Eastern European Research: Primary Sources and Oral History

Postal address: Irmgard Hein Ellingson
P. O. Box 101
Grafton, Iowa 50440-0101
eMail address: irmgard@wctatel.net