Professorship for Agnieszka Karpowicz
The year 2026 began with the very pleasant news that Agnieszka Karpowicz has been awarded the title of Professor. Agnieszka Karpowicz, a member of the Anthropology of the Word Section at the Institute of Polish Culture specializes in the work of Miron Białoszewski and Leopold Buczkowski, (neo)avant-garde logovisual practices, and 20th and 21stcentury literature and art from the perspective of (inter)media and urban studies. Her latest book, Białoszewski Temporalny (czerwiec 1975–czerwiec 1976), was published in 2023. Congratulations!
Lektury zaangażowane seminar 2025/26
This year’s Lektury Zaangażowane [Engaged Readings] seminars began with discussions about two fascinating works: with Prof. Wojciech Śmieja (University of Silesia), about his history of Polish masculinities and with Dr. Piotr Filipkowski (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences) about the book In The Storms of Transformation. Two Shipyards between Socialism and the EU. By the end of the year, we will discuss books by: Dr. Maciej Nawrocki (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities), Prof. Agnieszka Pasieka (Université de Montréal), Dr. Monika Borys, and Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski. We invite you to our upcoming Thursday seminars (held in Polish), the next one taking place on January 15th at 5:00 PM (link: https://ikp.uw.edu.pl/2025/12/16/lektury-zaangazowane-sarmatyzm-historia-pojecia/)!
Gender and queer perspectives in researching music
On January 23rd, we’re adding engaged listening to engaged reading! Dr. Marta Beszterda van Vliet, Dr. Aleksandra Kamińska (American Studies Center, University of Warsaw), Dr. Aneta Markuszewska (Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw), and Dr. Konrad Sierzputowski (IKP UW) will participate in the discussion Gender and Queer Studies Methodologies in Music Research. The discussion, moderated by Dr. Marcin Bogucki (IKP UW), will address the individual theoretical inspirations of those working on this topic, research/activism practices related to gender and queer perspectives, institutional obstacles, and the prospects for the development of music research that incorporates issues of gender and sexuality, particularly in Poland. More information: https://ikp.uw.edu.pl/2025/12/30/sluchanie-zaangazowane-gender-i-queer-w-badanich-nad-muzyka/.
The Anthropo(s)cene, interwar Polish blackface and dwelling in state farms
The end of 2025 saw the publishing of three exceptionally interesting articles by researchers from the Institute of Polish Culture.
Dr. Dorota Sosnowska – in issue #8 of the interdisciplinary journal “Insert,” titled Transforming the Anthropo(s)cene (link: https://insert.art/) – guides her readers through the exhibition Savvaļa by Latvian painter Andris Eglītis, organized in a forest several dozen kilometres from Riga. Sosnowska draws on the theoretical propositions of Nigel Thrift and Jussi Parikka to capture Eglītis’s artistic strategies, which offer viewers “a scene that absorbs them into an abject world, in which both the human and the non-human lose their meaning.” The article can be read on the magazine’s website: https://insert.art/ausgaben/transforming-the-anthroposcene/wild-scene/.
In her article, Dwelling through Labor: Contribution to the Embodied History of State Farms in Socialist Poland (link: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/97810…), Ph.D. student Justyna Szklarczyk analyzes the memoirs of state farm workers to uncover the bodily dimension of labouring on state farms in socialist Poland. The author focuses primarily on grassroots and spontaneous practices of inhabiting in the case of the palaces that were taken over by State Farms after the Second World War and adapted into workers’ housing, schools, clinics and cultural centres. This article is the result of a National Science Centre (NCN) Preludium grant, led by Szklarczyk (link: https://ikp.uw.edu.pl/en/research/research-projects/cultural-history-and-practices-of-dwelling-in-state-farm-palaces-in-masuria-during-socialist-and-post-socialist-poland/). It was published in the volume Embodied Labor. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Work’s Cultural Heritage in Modern Europe, edited by Marta Kurkowska-Budzan and Aleksandra Galasińska, published by Routledge (link: https://www.routledge.com/Embodied-Labour-Interdisciplinary-Perspectives-on-Works-Cultural-Heritage-in-Modern-Europe/Kurkowska-Budzan-Galasinska/p/book/9781041073055).
The special issue of “Slavic Review” (Fall 2025), devoted to blackness in Central and Eastern Europe, features an article by Dr. Łukasz Zaremba and Maciej Duklewski (Interdisciplinary Doctoral School, University of Warsaw), titled Our Blackface Sounds Familiar. Historical Imitations of Blackness in Poland (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/articl…). The article engages with the history of blackface performance and imagery in Poland, treating it as a lens granting insight into ways of imagining blackness in the region. It focuses on the interwar period as a time of rapid adaptation of colonial imagination with its global racial hierarchies in the public sphere of the newly independent country. Against the ideology of “colonial exceptionalism” and “white innocence” based on an assumption that Poland—as a state with no history of overseas colonies and Black slavery—is free of anti-black racism, the authors describe the active involvement of large groups of society in transnational colonial imagination, developed especially in the sphere of entertainment. The article is a result of the research project Colonial Complex. Visual Culture and ‘Colonialism without Colonies’ in the Interwar Period on Poland (link: https://ikp.uw.edu.pl/en/research/research-projects/colonial-complex-visual-culture-and-colonialism-without-colonies-in-the-interwar-period-in-poland/).
CFP: “Visuality of HIV/AIDS” in “Widok”
Abstracts can be submitted until January 31stfor the issue of the journal “Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Cultue,” devoted to the visuality of HIV/AIDS. The editors are Dr. Dorota Sosnowska and Katarzyna Szarla (Doctoral School of the Humanities, University of Warsaw). “Widok” invites researchers interested in critically examining the ways in which infection and disease are depicted; the social, cultural, and political contexts of these representations; and the role of visuality in the creation of knowledge, institutions and structures of power, memory, and communities. More details can be found on the journal’s website: https://www.pismowidok.org/en/cfp/46-visualities-of-hivaids.
New Grants
Izabella Tyborowicz (Interdisciplinary Doctoral School) has received funding for her project Ballroom Culture in Poland through the National Science Centre PRELUDIUM program young researchers. The project focuses on the development and significance of ballroom culture in Poland—from its emergence in 2012 to the present—and aims to create the first comprehensive study of this phenomenon in the local context. The aim is to examine ballroom as a phenomenon both borrowed and rooted locally. The evolution of the ballroom scene in Poland will be analyzed in the context of specific socio-political conditions: the situation of LGBTQ+ people, national politics, and the level of social acceptance. Congratulations!
The project Eurovision Song Contest as an Arena for Pluralism and Europeanness (ESCAPE) has received funding from the SEED program for universities in the 4EU+ Alliance. The project is coordinated by Dr. Lisa Bolz from the University of the Sorbonne, with Dr. Marcin Bogucki serving as one of the local coordinators. ESCAPE examines how European identity is created, negotiated, and contested through the Eurovision Song Contest. It consists of three research areas: (1) decision-making actors and institutions; (2) media representations; and (3) reception, which both reinforce and challenge dominant narratives of European identity. The grant is implemented by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from five universities in the 4EU+ Alliance (Paris, Warsaw, Prague, Copenhagen, Heidelberg) and combines the methodologies of media studies, musicology, cultural studies, and regional studies.