On October 9, Karolina presented her work on the Polish part of her research at the seminar of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her talk focused on the methodological challenges of working with hauntology, both in archival research and in ethnographic fieldwork. She discussed the underexplored topic of the second generation of settlers, as well as the methodological questions that arise when working with non-institutional archives, such as materials preserved privately in family homes rather than in public repositories. Karolina also reflected on how spaces, much like objects, undergo processes of resemanticization, acquiring new meanings through use, memory, and everyday practice.
The discussion that followed centered on both methodological and theoretical concerns, including the role of fact and conjecture in recounting histories, and the specific historical trajectories of the formerly German territories incorporated into Poland after 1945.
Karolina expresses her gratitude to the organizers for the invitation and for a rich and stimulating discussion that further deepened the methodological dialogue within our project.