Angelika Zanki

We are proud to announce that our PI, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, is a winner of the NCN Award!

Ceremony was held in the Gallery of 19th-century Polish Art in the Sukiennice, part of the National Museum in Kraków. As always, the ceremony was hosted by Grażyna Torbicka.

The NCN Award is given to researchers under the age of 40, who are affiliated with Polish research institutions and boast a strong basic research and publication record in one of the following three panels: Arts, Humanities and Social sciences (HS), Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST), and Life Sciences (NZ). The main criteria for the selection process are scientific excellence and international recognition.

The jury consists of NCN Council Members and the NCN Director. This year, nearly 700 people were eligible to nominate candidates including, e.g., previous NCN Award winners, former NCN Council members and other outstanding researchers. An important condition is that they have not collaborated, taken part in any joint endeavours or published a paper together in the past 5 years. In addition, they should not have any familial or professional relationship and researchers cannot nominate their current or former PhD students. This year, the NCN received 53 nominations, including 44 candidates (some were nominated by more than one person). Nominees include 20 researchers in Physical Sciences and Engineering, 16 in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and 8 in Life Sciences.

In the weeks that follow, winners will deliver a series of lectures, we will let you know where you can find it. Now, more about award and this year’s winners you can read here.

The Anthropos Doctoral School recently celebrated the commencement of the academic year with an engaging kick-off event held at the Lelewel hall in the Old Town Market, Warsaw. The event was not only a collective welcome to the new academic year but also marked the induction of Magdalena Bubík, our team colleague, as a fresh addition to the doctoral student community. 

We believe that, accompanied by her supervisors, Nicole Dołowy-Rybińska and Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, Magdalena is set to embark on an academic journey at the Anthropos. During the inauguration, it was highlighted that she joins a dynamic cohort of 13 colleagues from diverse fields, including archaeology, literary studies, and history. This diversity promises a rich environment for intellectual exchange and broadening perspectives. 

We wish Magdalena and her fellow doctoral candidates success in their academic pursuits at the Anthropos Doctoral School.

The Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), together with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Poland, co-organized training for doctoral students devoted to writing effective international grant applications.

Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska shared her experience in preparing the ERC application, while Wojciech Święszkowski talked about his role as a reviewer in the ERC. The discussion with both invited guests was a part of the workshop on writing effective grant applications, conducted by an expert from Germany, Dr. Sabine Preusse. Since the issues regarding writing grant applications are a common challenge for young scientists at an early stage of professional development, sharing knowledge and expertise in funding opportunities at the European level provides a valuable opportunity for PhD candidates. 

The workshop was held on September 29, 2023 in Warsaw. 

After the Warsaw Uprising, the Slovak National Uprising was the largest anti-Nazi insurrection in Central Europe. It is a crucial event in Slovak modern history as well as in the country’s culture of remembrance regarding WWII. As such it has its own museum and central memorial in Banská Bystrica, the center of the anti-Nazi resistance during the uprising. Even though the insurrection was suppressed in less than two months, it helped the Allies in the fight against Nazi Germany. Its significance on a moral and political level was central: part of the Slovak nation rose up against the authoritative regime of the First Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany, in order to restore democracy. However, it also has its negative aspects, such as the treatment of the German civilian population by the partisans. The most tragic event in this regard took place in the predominantly German village of Sklené / Glaserhau. On 21 September 1944, under the pretext of digging trenches, the partisans took about 300 men between 16 and 60 years of age from the village and shot 187 of them at the edge of a nearby forest. In 1994, 50 years later, a monument of the Sklené massacre was established on the mass grave of its victims. Nevertheless, as the historical narrative presented in the current exhibition in the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising shows, the memory of the violence against the German civilian population is being marginalized. This process enables far-right groups and political parties glorifying the First Slovak Republic to take over the memory of murdered Germans and in doing so also instrumentalize the narrative of the whole uprising.

You can read blog post in Slovak here.

We are happy to announce that under our grant project there was an open competition for the position of PhD student/assistant. Based on the evaluation of the submitted documents and an interview, the recruitment committee decided to choose mgr Magdalena Bubík.

Magdalena consistently takes huge pride in her heritage, underlining her identity as a denizen of the borderlands. Although she hails from Czech Cieszyn, she has always viewed the city of Cieszyn as a place unified by the river rather than divided by a border. Generations of her ancestors were marked by a rich tapestry of multiculturalism and religious diversity, which is why during her historical studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, she focused on the cultural heritage of Cieszyn Silesia, especially from a religious perspective.

Her deep fascination with diverse cultures fuels her love for globetrotting, exploring historical landmarks and the natural world, engaging in enriching conversations with people and savoring delectable cuisine. She sometimes loses herself in the captivating narratives of Agatha Christie’s novels or “The Lord of the Rings”. Additionally, she has an innate and familial passion for music. Particularly, she enjoys singing duets with her younger sister and listening to traditional Georgian music.

Karolina delves into the history of Polish non-fiction literature focusing on the so called Polish Recovered Territories. She analyzes its allure to writers and its political relevance after the war. She also shed light on the relative obscurity of these works and analyzed their evolution, highlighting their portrayal of shifting societal attitudes and perspectives.

You can read post here.

Are we still interested in “poniemieckie” in Poland? The debate “Objects as time machines” at the Sopot Literary Festival

Do objects carry intrinsic meanings or are immanently connected with human memories? It was one of the questions the participants of the debate entitled “Objects as time machines” at the Sopot Literary Festival in Sopot (formerly German Zopott) pondered. Beata Maciejewska, journalist of “Gazeta Wyborcza” from Wrocław (formerly German Breslau) prepared a couple of intriguing and thought provoking questions for other participants: Stefan Chwin, literary scholar and writer from Gdańsk (formerly German Danzig), whose novel “Hanemann” was a milestone in Polish literature on the postwar migrations, Dariusz Brzostek, culturology professor from Toruń who is dealing with cultural capacities of objects, and the PI of our Spectral Recycling project, Karolina. 

Together, they were discussing how we are today dealing with formerly German objects. Do we put on the walls the photos of the imagined grandparents we found in flea markets, as Beata said, or are we witnesses of the dropping number of people who are interested in these objects, as Stefan proclaimed? Unexpectedly, the conversation also delved into the enigmatic tales concealed within tapestries. What can be found when we get rid of the first, obvious layer and look behind it?

After German-speaking inhabitants were expelled in 1946 from many regions of what is currently the Czech Republic, the material reminders of German culture were also to disappear. Karina Hoření, our team member who conducts ethnographic research in northern Bohemia, illustrates in her blog post that reminders of German culture can still be found in Czech towns and villages. One of these reminders are German inscriptions on houses, which drew visitors’ attention to shops or services that no longer exist. Such inscriptions fit into our research framework of hauntology because they are reminders of a traumatic past that was supposed to disappear.

You can read new blog post here.