Angelika Zanki

Human remains discovered some time ago in the Czech town of Postoloprty have once again raised the question of postwar violence against the civilian German-speaking population. They also remind us how difficult it can be to talk about a past that does not fit neatly into the usual division between victims and perpetrators.

In a new article for Denník N, our researcher Michal uses the example of Postoloprty to look at how Czech society deals with this uncomfortable past. He compares the Czech experience with the way violence against German civilians during the Slovak National Uprising is remembered in Slovakia.

Why do Sklené, Banská Štiavnica, and Magurka remain at the margins of the story of the Slovak National Uprising? And what happens when we do not want to talk about the uncomfortable chapters of our own past?

Link to the article you can find here.

📅 Wednesday, 21 October 2026, 6:00 pm
📍 Pracownia Duży Pokój, ul. Warecka 4/6, Warsaw (entrance from Kubusia Puchatka Street)

Why in 2026 did a municipality in Western Pomerania use a mug featuring a Nazi to promote itself? How should we understand the identities of Wrocław, Szczecin and Zielona Góra: as formerly German or Polish? Can a granary serve as a museum, and who decides how such places and their histories are presented?

Many of the terms we use to describe our history are still preceded by the phrase “so-called”, as in the case of the “Recovered Territories”. This linguistic distance says much about our relationship with the past. Despite more than eighty years of research into the displacement of German populations and the resettlement of territories incorporated into Poland after the Second World War, the material and cultural legacies of the “formerly German” have only relatively recently entered mainstream Polish popular culture.

This discussion examines how understandings of the “Recovered Territories” are changing and being debated today. How do we use the term “formerly German” today, and how does it shape not only our understanding of the past but also the places we live in and our everyday experiences? Which stories about these territories do we tell, which remain untold, and which receive the most attention? We will also consider how a post-war project of social engineering has evolved in ways that its creators could not have anticipated.

The discussion will feature dr Małgorzata Bukiel (Institute for Western Affairs in Poznań), dr Małgorzata Łukianow (Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw) and our own Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska. It will be moderated by dr Helena Patzer (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw).

The event is co-organised by Stowarzyszenie „Pracownia Etnograficzna”, Pracownia Duży Pokój, the European Union (ERC, Spectral Recycling, 101041946), Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Institute for Western Affairs in Poznań, Centre for Research on Social Memory, and Polish Memory Studies Group.

On 21–22 September 2026, Angelika Zanki, our project manager and facilitator, participated in the workshop “PolSCA Masterclass – Advanced Workshop: Research Project Management Using the PM² Methodology”, organised by the PolSCA – Polish Science Contact Agency in Brussels, in cooperation with the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot. The workshop, led by Dr Agnieszka Grzegorczyk, a trainer and expert in project management in the R&D sector and public administration, had a strongly practical focus and provided an opportunity to directly relate the topics discussed to real-life challenges encountered in the implementation of research projects.

Working on projects funded under ERC grants requires continuous updating of knowledge, becoming familiar with new management methodologies, and improving approaches to work organisation and team collaboration. During the two-day workshop, Angelika had the opportunty to deepen her knowledge of the application of the PM² methodology to research project management, with particular attention to the specific characteristics of projects implemented within European funding programmes. PM² Methodology,  developed by the European Commission, provides a methodology for effectively managing projects. It offers practical guidelines, management activities, and best practices that can be tailored to the needs of organisations and teams.  A significant part of the training focused on project planning and monitoring, tracking milestones and outcome and impact indicators, as well as requirements related to periodic and final reporting.

Another important component of the training was the development of competences in risk, issue and project change management. Participants worked on methods for identifying and classifying risks, maintaining a risk register, and developing appropriate risk response plans.  Additionaly, the workshop covered project communication and diplomacy, particularly in situations requiring coordination, agreement and negotiation within teams and consortia.

Participants were introduced to the potential use of prompt engineering and AI tools to support communication, negotiations and day-to-day administrative work. Particular attention was given to the Human-in-the-Loop and AI-Copiloting models, which can support the streamlining of processes while retaining human responsibility for decisions. The topic of artificial intelligence generated an extensive discussion among the participants, highlighting the need to establish clear principles and guidelines for the use of various AI tools in the day-to-day administration of European research projects.

An important part of the training was also the analysis of the research project life cycle, from initiation through to project closure, including work with real-life scenarios and the exchange of experiences and good practices. The workshop addressed as well the respective responsibilities of the individuals involved in project implementation, helping to further clarify roles and areas of cooperation within the project.

Participation in the training enabled Angelika to expand and update her competences in ERC project management, as well as to become familiar with new tools and working methods that can be applied to the ongoing implementation of the project. At the same time, Angelika actively shared her own experience and proposed solutions to practical challenges arising in the context of working on the aforementioned project, thereby contributing to the exchange of knowledge and good practices among the workshop participants.

A new chapter titled “From the Battlefield to the Stadium. The Transformation of Male and Female Bodies in German Commemorative Practices regarding the First World War in the 1920s and 1930s.” by Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska has been published in a collective volume “Monuments and Cemeteries of the First World War in Europe”, edited by Kamil Ruszała, and issued by the Brill.

In her chapter, Karolina examines how, in interwar Germany, First World War memorials shaped collective memory by idealizing the male body and linking commemoration with sport.

A link to the full text you can find here and here.

We are pleased to announce that Michal Korhel is one of the guest editors of a special issue of Český lid. We encourage researchers to submit their articles for consideration.

More information below.

Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2026

Český lid, 1/2028 – Special Issue

WALKING MATTERS: Kinaesthetic Modes of Memory, Belonging and Research

Guest editors: Michal Korhel (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), Jana Nosková (Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno), Sabine Stach (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)

Walking, hiking, pilgrimage, biking or even running – moving of one’s own accord – are essential for exploring historic sites, experiencing landscapes, researching cultures and commemorating past events and people. Walking is not just a way of getting from A to B; it can also be used deliberately to stimulate thoughts, memories or relationships, and to foster a sense of identity. For more than ten years, hundreds of people have each year walked the 32-kilometre “March of Reconciliation” (“Pouť smíření”) route from Pohořelice to Brno. In May 1945, some 20,000 German-speaking residents of Brno were driven out along this same route towards Austria. In Warsaw, more than 12,000 people took part in this year’s 35th commemorative run for the “heroes” of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising (“Bieg Powstania Warszawskiego”). In addition, there are numerous other commemorative activities that are based on physical, and in some cases athletic, practices. For instance, people hike through their families’ regions of origin, traverse former borders, retrace historical routes, undertake pilgrimages to historic sites or explore landscapes through tourism and everyday movement.

For researchers in the fields of Memory Studies, Heritage Studies or Public History, such kinaesthetic modes of engaging with the past require a broader methodological toolkit: they must become physically active themselves. Consequently, researchers are increasingly drawing on methods that anthropologists have been using and discussing for many years. Approaches such as walking ethnography, participant observation, mobile interviews and sensory ethnography are based on the idea that knowledge is inextricably linked to the physical and spatial context in which it is created. When walking alongside their interviewees, researchers perceive the landscape differently from how they would in a stationary interview. Conversations, memories and narratives can also be transformed by movement and encounters with specific places. This raises the question of the positionality of the ‘walking’ researcher; terrain, weather, physical exertion, speed, breaks and shared spatial orientation all influence the research situation. Therefore, walking ethnography is not merely a mobile variant of the qualitative interview, but rather a research approach that actively incorporates the body, movement and the environment into the production of knowledge.

This special issue explores the relationship between movement, perception and knowledge. Taking walking as a case study (while also considering other forms of non-motorised movement), it examines the interplay between memory, belonging and research. It considers the various contexts and forms of mobile experience, ranging from everyday walks and hikes to tourist activities, border crossings, journeys through ancestral landscapes, pilgrimages, processions, memorial marches, memory walks and historical re-enactments. Particular attention is given to the interplay between physicality, landscape, materiality, movement, repetition, collective participation, emotion and a sense of belonging. How can the increasing use of the body as a medium of memory be explained and explored? What relationship exists between historical tradition, individual memory, political activism and the search for unique experiences? It also asks: How does the perception of a place change when it is traversed rather than merely observed? In what ways are memories activated through movement and tied to the landscape? What role do distance, speed, rhythm, exhaustion, the weather or the terrain play? In terms of explicit remembrance practices, the tension between the significance attributed to such events and how participants actually experience them is also worth noting, as well as is the overlap between leisure, sport, commemoration and historical education that characterises many of these formats.

Český lid / Czech Ethnological Journal is the leading, peer-reviewed Czech ethnological journal, published in print and in diamond open access by the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague; it is regularly indexed and abstracted in Scopus (Q2). The aim of this special issue, co-edited by Michal Korhel, Jana Nosková and Sabine Stach, is to encourage dialogue among scholars working in ethnology and anthropology, history, human geography, memory and heritage studies, mobility studies and tourism research. The focus is on contemporary examples (generally dating from around 1989 onwards), though historical genealogies may be included where they are relevant to understanding current practices. We particularly welcome contributions that present innovative methodological approaches through concrete case studies, while also exploring the analytical value of a kinaesthetic perspective for understanding space, memory and belonging.

Possible topics include, among others:

• Walking and remembering: commemorative marches, memory walks, pilgrimages, processions, historical re-enactments, commemorative marathons and runs, and other forms of physically practised remembrance;
• Walking and belonging: heritage tourism, genealogical journeys, return journeys to regions of origin and movement through familial and biographical landscapes;
• Walking and borders: border hikes and bike tours, routes along former and current borders, such as the Iron Curtain Trail, cross-border routes and the physical experience of political spaces;
• Walking and landscape: the perception and appropriation of historical, post-industrial, post-Soviet or post-socialist landscapes through movement;
• Walking and heritage: themed walks, heritage trails, tourist routes and the production of historical landscapes;
• Walking and mobility: the relationship between walking and other forms of physical movement such as running or cycling; questions of speed, rhythm and physical exertion; the experiences of people with physical disabilities, including questions of inclusion and accessibility;
• Walking as method: walking interviews, walking ethnography, mobile and sensory methods, and issues of positionality, reflexivity and knowledge production.

Of particular interest are contributions that connect these areas and view walking as a situated and embodied practice of perception and knowledge production.

Abstracts (max. 500 words, in English) should outline the research question(s) as well as the theoretical and methodological approach adopted and can be submitted to sabine.stach@leibniz-gwzo.de and noskova@eu.cas.cz.

Contributors should also include a short, 100-word biographical note (in English).

Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2026

Notification of acceptance: 15 December 2026

Full chapter submission: 15 June 2027

For further information, please contact Sabine Stach sabine.stach@leibniz-gwzo.de.

On August 21st, Karina Hoření was invited to speak at the discussion “Kdo se bojí Sudet?” (“Who is afraid of Sudetenland?”). The debate was a public event of the annual Summer School for Teachers, organized by the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and the DOX gallery, where it was held. 

Together with Olga Nešporová from the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, and Matěj Spurný from the Institute of History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, they shared experience from their research and public work in the region. The debate focused on the recent controversy around the assembly of the Sudetenland Expelees Organization and the March of Reconciliation in Brno this May. During the debate, Karina shared her experience from the march and her interpretation, which she summed up in her latest blog post.

This year’s Sudeten German Days for the first time took place in Brno, Czechia. This provoked a backlash from Czech nationalists. You can read about it in either Karina Hoření’s or Michal Korhel’s texts published soon after these events. It also became the starting point for a conversation about the history of Czech-German relations in the recent two-part episode in the Czechostacja podcast, where the quest was Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska. Karolina, together with the podcast’s host, Jakub Medek, discuss difficult legacy of Czech-German relations after the Second World War. They explore the German violence toward Czechs during the war and occupation, and then the so-called “wild expulsions” of Germans from Czechoslovakia in 1945, a period marked by death marches and local massacres. How is this remembered in contemporary Czechia? And is there a way out of such an entangled history of violence?

We invite you to listen to both episodes available here and here.

From 21 to 24 July 2026, members of our project team took part in the biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), held in Poznań under the theme “Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World”. The event brought together anthropologists from across Europe and beyond to discuss current challenges, methodological innovations, and new directions in anthropological research.

Researchers from the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences were strongly represented at the conference, presenting their work and co-organising panels and workshops. Our project team actively contributed to these activities.

Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska co-organised the panel “Entangled Ruins: Polarised Temporalities and the Afterlives of Decay” together with Václav Sixta (Charles University, Prague). The panel explored different ways in which ruins can be powerful actors of the polarised temporalities of our age, as they embody collisions between past and future, decay and renewal, endurance and disappearance. Thanks to the collaboration with colleagues from Charles University, Karolína Pauknerová and Eliška Fulinová, who served as discussants, the panel sparked inspiring discussions, creating new opportunities for future collaboration. We are happy that it was again an occasion to meet our colleagues from the project “The Land Gone Wild. Archaeological and Transdisciplinary Research on Resilience Strategies in the 20th Century”, affiliated with several Czech institutions and interested in tracing German traces.

Karina Hoření presented the paper “Ethnography to Make It to the Pre-School – New Vocabulary for Ethnographic Practice” as part of the panel on Patchwork Ethnography. Her presentation reflected on methodological adaptations in contemporary ethnographic research and contributed to ongoing conversations about flexible and sustainable fieldwork practices. She used her experience in Spectral Recycling, conducting fieldwork in Liberec.

Magdalena Bubík presented the paper “Can a Ghost Hinder Urban Development? The Site of the Former Town Church and Victory Square in Piła” in a panel dedicated to the agency of religious buildings. Her presentation examined how the memory of a demolished church continues to influence urban space and local perceptions, demonstrating the lasting social significance of places that have physically disappeared in post-displacement regions.

Participating in EASA 2026 provided an excellent opportunity to share our research with the international anthropological community, receive valuable feedback, strengthen existing collaborations, and establish new academic connections that will contribute to the further development of the project.

The swastika is widely recognized as the emblem of Nazism and the Second World War. Yet today it also appears in parks, cemeteries, on walls, and in other public spaces, where it often carries meanings that extend beyond its historical association.

Drawing on field research conducted in Central Europe, Michal Korhel examines how the swastika functions as a dynamic symbol whose significance is continually redefined in changing social and political contexts. While its connection to Nazism remains central, the symbol is increasingly employed to express anger, hostility, protest, or moral condemnation in contemporary public discourse.

Rather than treating the swastika as a symbol with a single, fixed meaning, the blog post demonstrates how its interpretation is shaped by the contexts in which it appears, the spaces it occupies, and the ways it is understood within collective memory.

Link to the blog post you can find here.

From 26 June to 1 July, Magdalena participated in the international summer school “Recording & Transformation,” organized by the Anthropos Doctoral School and the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, Leipzig University, and the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO). The summer school took place in the picturesque village of Pozorty in the Masuria region, right by a lake. After intensive days filled with lectures and workshops, participants enjoyed relaxing by the water – especially as the exceptionally hot weather made the lakeside setting particularly welcome. 

The program featured lectures, workshops, and practical sessions led by distinguished scholars from various academic institutions: Prof. Harald Braun (Liverpool), Prof. Megan Maruschke (Leipzig), Dr. Nuala Caomhanach (Graduate Institute, Geneva), Dr. Izabela Mrzygłód (DHI, IH PAN) & Dr. Zachary Mazur (POLIN, IH PAN). Together with an international group of doctoral researchers, participants discussed contemporary archival studies, transformations of archives, and the role of archives during periods of social and political change. 

Magdalena was part of the group that prepared a presentation and discussion on Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor’s article From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives (2016). The discussion focused on the concept of radical empathy in archival and research practice. Magdalena sees this approach as highly relevant to her own doctoral research, as her project explores the relationships between the researcher, archives, archivists, and interviewees, who not only contribute source material but also actively participate in the creation of historical narratives. Another important component of the program consisted of workshops designed to develop participants’ presentation skills, including Elevator Pitches and Public Speaking & Job Talks. For Magdalena, the summer school was not only an opportunity to acquire new skills but also to refine and further develop the key arguments of her doctoral dissertation. 

The organizers also included a field excursion in the program. Participants took a boat trip along the Elbląg Canal, where they learned about one of Europe’s most remarkable achievements in hydraulic engineering. Particular attention was devoted to the canal’s unique inclined-plane system, which allows boats to travel over land on specially designed rail-mounted carriages. Invented in the nineteenth century by Prussian Georg Jacob Steenke, this engineering solution also serves as a reminder of the region’s multicultural past, when much of Masuria was inhabited by German-speaking communities. In this way, the summer school successfully combined theoretical reflection on archives and memory with the direct experience of a landscape that itself bears witness to historical transformations.