We are pleased to invite you to the 33rd seminar of the Researchers on the Border (Badaczki i Badacze na Granicy) group. This edition is organized in collaboration with the Spectral Recycling project team and devoted to the theme of memory of borders and border-making. While previous meetings often focused on the Polish-Belarusian border, this session aims to broaden the geographical scope. We welcome researchers from disciplines such as anthropology, history, sociology, border, landscape, materiality, and performativity studies. We are looking for contributions exploring how state or regional borders impact the daily lives of local and national communities.

Date: June 12-13, 2026

Format: Hybrid (Online & On-site in Gruszki near Narewka, Podlasie)

Languages: Polish and English

Submission Deadline: May 24, 2026

We will announce the program by May 27.

Logistics: Free accommodation for presenters is available on-site upon prior arrangement. The seminar is a collective space, thus, we jointly care for the quality of discussion and the shared environment, including preparing meat-free meals and maintaining the space.

Register here.

Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska was featured in the fourth episode of the #pokolenieNCN anniversary series created to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the National Science Centre, Poland (NCN). The series consists of 15 short interviews with researchers representing the “NCN generation” and is hosted by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.

In the interview, Karolina discusses her research on resettlement cultures formed after 1945 in post-displacement areas of Poland and former Czechoslovakia. She also talks about material traces of the past, memory of place, and the ways successive generations build relationships with inherited spaces.

The conversation was also an opportunity to present ERC StG project and to highlight the importance of national grants, which help researchers gain experience needed to apply for European funding. She also reflects on the role of NCN grants in developing an independent research career. As a bonus, viewers can also find out what profession she might have chosen if she had not become a researcher.

You will find the link to the conversation here.

Is the Sudetenland merely a patchwork of fragmented, melancholic histories? Inspired by the Sudetenlove comic exhibition in Olomouc, Magdalena Bubík revisits this question with a fresh perspective. In her blog post, she argues that these stories are not entirely lost, they persist through memories embedded in objects and buildings. It’s a piece that invites readers to see continuity where fragmentation is often assumed.

Link to the blog post you can find here.

On April 12, the Wałcz Land Museum hosted an event “How much of ‘centralacy’ is in us?”, bringing attention to a relatively overlooked dimension of the region’s postwar past, namely, the experiences of settlers from central Poland, the “centralacy.” As our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, was involved in the creation of the Museum’s new permanent exhibition, she led a tour through it, focusing on the life trajectories of the “centralacy,” using examples from her fieldwork and archival search queries.

Since the exhibition begins with a shared introduction, explaining the propaganda surrounding the expulsion and resettlement, as well as the establishment of the Polish administration in the “Recovered Territories,” and is then divided according to different groups of settlers, Karolina chose to follow this structure to highlight the specificity of resettlement among those from central Poland. She then elaborated on the section of the exhibition devoted specifically to this group, explaining what was understood as “Centrala” and where these people actually came from.

We are happy that the collaboration with the Museum is ongoing, and that some of the research findings, despite not being directly connected to our projects, were embodied as part of a museum exhibition.