On the last day of May 2024, we celebrated the second anniversary of work in the Spectral Recycling project. Our research involves archival queries in national and local archives, as well as ethnographic fieldwork in three selected regions, namely Pomerania in Poland, Northern Bohemia in Czechia, and Upper Nitra Basin in Slovakia. In the initial two years of our project, we successfully gathered nearly 200 interviews. This dataset encompasses both oral history interviews and ethnographic approaches. We spent many hours in the archives, looking for the relevant documents, talking with our interview partners, taking pictures of the things left behind, and exploring the locations we investigated.
Community-based research
During our project, we collaborate with local communities, focusing on the history and present of their post-displacement experiences. Two key partnerships stand out. Firstly, we engaged with the “Goleniów Photostories” project, based in Goleniów (formerly German Gollnow, Poland). After a series of photographic negatives depicting local settlers in the post-war decades was found, we helped with the launch of a community-driven initiative. Our team assisted in establishing the methodological framework for ethnographic studies, including interviews, and carrying out some of them (interview 1 and interview 2). Secondly, we collaborate with the Wałcz Land Museum. The project’s PI not only conducted ethnographic interviews but also contributed to framing the museum’s new permanent exhibition, which will focus on artifacts brought by settlers and unveiled by them on-site. We are very happy to be a part of these initiatives, as we firmly believe that ethnographic research is inherently tied to social engagement as well.
Presence in media
Our team maintains a notable media presence, actively disseminating the topic of our research. We participate in radio broadcasts, podcasts, and public lectures, effectively reaching wider audiences, i.e. beyond academia. Furthermore, the project’s PI has given several interviews for various news outlets (links you can find here). These interviews followed her recognition—the Polish National Science Centre Award in Humanities and Social Sciences [more information: short video with English subtitles, podcast on Spotify (in Polish) and a note]—for pioneering the establishment of a novel category of the resettlement cultures.
Series of public lectures
Our team actively engages with broader audiences also beyond the media. To date, team members have delivered a total of 8 public lectures in Warsaw, Wrocław, Halle, and Prague. These events cater not only to scholarly audiences but also provide an opportunity for individuals outside the disciplines of ethnography and history, or academia in general, to become acquainted with the topic. Attendees can share stories related to their families and personal experiences in the context of post-displacement. The interest shows how the topic is still relevant but also that hauntology provides us with language that is new in the debate about this topic in respective countries. Furthermore, on May 22nd, 2024, we had the opportunity to present our project at the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna with invited commentators from the Department of History at the University of Vienna, Professors Claudia Kraft and Kerstin von Lingen. It helped us to polish some of the aspects of our methodological queries. Also, we organised the first workshop planned for the project that took place in Vienna (link) on 23 May, 2024. We are delighted to share our research and learn from other researchers–we look forward to more such opportunities in the future.
Where to read about our findings?
As is usual in academia, we presented the initial findings as the conference papers and articles. We invite you to get to know more about the topic we study, learning about our conference presentations and poster. You are also cordially invited to read the 5 articles available on our website. You can learn about the redefining of the German heritage, including the furniture left behind and the fruit orchards, read what the ignoring of the local knowledge may cause and how the idea of “recovery” of formerly German lands developed over time. Moreover, we share with you many experiences through blog posts in the languages of the studied regions. To date, we published as many as 14 posts, beginning in March 2023. You can learn about our field experiences, impressions and partial studies (some posts you can find here, prepared by Karolina, Karina, Michal and Magdalena). We inform you about our activities on the News section, for now we have prepared around 100 news in Polish and English.
Additionally, we prepared Postcards — a component envisioned as part of our methodological experiment. Drawing inspiration from a similar approach, we engaged in collaborative practices centered around ethnographic postcards. These postcards facilitated the creation, sharing, and comparison of materials across seemingly disparate field sites. You can see them as well and learn about other aspects of our project!
There are three more years of work ahead of us, and we are not slowing down. We will keep you informed about new activities, plans and achievements. You can see the list of all our activities here. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook where we keep you updated about what we do, but also share various interesting facts and information about our research work, the people we meet and the regions where we work.
