Set up in February 1992 on the base of the Lviv department of M. Rylsky Institute of Art, Folklore Studies and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

The Institute is an influential scholarly ethnological center in Ukraine, it carries out research in the fields of ethnography, folklore, art and museum studies. Recently the research team of the Institute has started to investigate issues of theoretical ethnology, namely, those of Ukrainian natiology, ethnolinguistics, of urban and gender studies etc.

Among major achievements of Institute's researchers is the fundamental 4-volume study "Ethnogenesis and Ethnic History of Inhabitants of the Ukrainian Carpathian Region", as well as preparation of new scholarly syntheses based on cultural phenomena in the massif of Ukrainian ethnic borderlands. In 1994 – 2003 the Ethnology Institute carried out integral historical and ethnographic studies with fixing the material and spiritual artifacts in the culture of radioactively contaminated territories of Ukrainian Polissia; these were used as the basis for publishing 3 volumes of academic proceedings and producing the first in Ukraine automated system of describing and classifying objects of Polissia ethnic heritage. Such monographic studies of Institute’s researchers as "Ukrainian Painting of X – XVIII Centuries: Issues of Colouring", "Classicism and Romanticism in Ukrainian Art", "Finale of the Third Rome" etc. have become significant events in the life of academic community.