STUDENTS:

Ines Ackermann

Ines Ackermann will finish her PhD dissertation entitled “Borders of Language. Different self-descriptions as a 'Pole' in Belarus and Lithuania”, under the supervision of Professor Janusz Rieger. The dissertation will be defended in May 2015 at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” of the University of Warsaw and in association with the University of Vienna and the University of Vilnius. She graduated with honours awards from Humboldt University in Berlin in Polish Philology and Eastern European Cultures (with semesters abroad in Poland and Russia). Her main fields of interest are social linguistics and the development of the identities and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. She has taught seminars on the “Anthropology of Postsocialism” (winter 2012/13) and “Passivity and Opposition against Cultural Globalization: Poland and Germany” (2014/15). She also works occasionally as a Polish-German interpreter and as a freelance educator.
ines.ackermann@al.uw.edu.pl, ines.k.ackermann@gmail.com

Katarzyna Chruszczewska

Katarzyna Chruszczewska earned her MA in Cultural Studies from the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw (BA 2007, MA 2011). In 2008, she also undertook a second course of study at the Faculty of Philosophy (BA 2011). Her interests revolve around continental philosophy and aesthetics. In her doctoral dissertation “Negotiating Minor and Canonical: Gilles Deleuze and Harold Bloom on Literary Creation,” written within the International PhD Program and supervised by Professor Ewa Łukaszyk, she confronts two theories that link literary creation to the creative force of life. Through these she negotiates the concept of minor literature and the notion of strong, canonical writing on the planes of the political, the mythic, the tragic, the vitalistic and the literary. The planned date of her defense is April 2015.
k.chruszczewska@ibi.uw.edu.pl

Olimpia Dragouni

Olimpia Dragouni has pursued studied European Studies, International Relations and Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Warsaw, Macedonian history and culture at the University of Ss. Kyril and Methodius in Skopje (2011, 2013), and Islamic theology at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo (2014). She is writing her PhD dissertation (“Self-Identification of Slav-speaking Elites from the Territory of Macedonia under Ottoman Rule (19th century)”) under the supervision of Professor Jolanta Sujecka (planned defense: March 2015). Her interests include Ottoman Studies, Islam in the Balkans and Europe, multiculturalism, and the relations between politics and religion.
olimpia.dragouni@balkanistyka.org, olimpia.dragouni@al.uw.edu.pl

Ewa Róża Janion

Ewa Róża Janion graduated from the University of Warsaw in Modern Greek Studies (BA), Italian Studies (BA) and Mediterranean Studies (MA). She has also studied the Greek language at the University of Athens and Italian modern art at the University of Florence. Within the International PhD Program she is working on 19th-century philhellenism under the direction of Professor Maria Kalinowska (University of Warsaw, Faculty of “Artes Liberales”) and Professor George Tolias (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens). The defense of her thesis, entitled “The Legends of Suli. Interactions between the Culture of Modern Greece and European Philhellenism”, is scheduled for March 2015. Her intellectual interests also cover aspects of identity and gender studies, as well as comparative literature.
ewajanion@gmail.com

Julia Lewandowska

Julia Lewandowska holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the Institute of Iberian and Latin American Studies, University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on early modern Spain and colonial Latin America, and women’s cultural and intellectual history are at the center of her interest. Within the International PhD Program she is exploring the tradition of religious women writers, concentrating on non-canonical forms of expression (diaries, letters, vidas etc.), as well as on mystic writings. The title of her PhD dissertation, written under the supervision of Professor Joanna Partyka (University of Warsaw) and Professor Helena Goznález-Fernández (Universitat de Barcelona), is: “Nun Writers: Authority and Authorship in the Religious Women´s Writing of the Spanish Golden Ages.” During the International PhD Program she spent seven months as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre Dona i Literatura at the University of Barcelona and six months at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales at Consejo Superior de Investigación Centífica (CSIC) in Madrid. She has published articles in scholarly journals (e.g. Itinerarios. Revista de estudios lingüísticos, literarios, históricos y antropológicos) and in edited volumes published, among others, by Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Icaria and Liceus. The provisional date for her doctoral defense is June 2016.
julia.k.lewandowska@gmail.com

Ágnes Máté

Ágnes Máté holds an MA in Italian language and culture and an MA in Hungarian language and culture, both with a specialization in language-teaching education, from the University of Szeged, Hungary. Her main areas of interest are Italian-Hungarian cultural relations during the 14th-16th centuries, and the early European reception of the works of Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca and Enea Silvio Piccolomini. She is working under the supervision of Professor Jerzy Snopek (University of Warsaw) and of Professor László Szörényi (MTA BTK ITI, Budapest). The title of her dissertation is: “Amanti italiani in veste ungherese. La fortuna di tre storie amorose umanistiche nel Cinquecento ungherese” [“Italian Lovers Wearing Hungarian Clothing. The Influence of Three Humanistic Love Stories in 16th-Century Hungary”]. Her dissertation is scheduled for defense in February 2015. She is also a member of the Hungaria Latina – Magyar Neolatin Társaság, a branch of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies.
mate.agnes.klara@gmail.com

Paweł Miech

Paweł Miech, a PhD student at the University of Warsaw, is a philosopher, cultural critic and author of a doctoral dissertation entitled “Traumatophilic Subjects. Psychoanalytic Case Studies” (planned defense: December 2014). He holds an MA in philosophy and sociology (Silesian University). Past research interests include: psychoanalysis, ancient philosophy, metaphysics, madness, love and the meaning of life. He is also currently interested in modern programming languages, cryptography, algorithms, history of computing and technological change.
pawelmhm@gmail.com

Karolina Mroziewicz

Karolina Mroziewicz holds an MA in Classical Philology and Art History from the University of Warsaw. Her current interests draw on these two disciplines and concentrate on the literary and visual culture of the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity, the relationships between visual and literary representations, early printed books and their role in identity discourse. All these issues surface in her PhD thesis “Imprinting Identities: Illustrated Latin-Language Histories of St. Stephen’s Kingdom (1488–1700),” written under the supervision of Professor Jerzy Axer and Professor Grażyna Jurkowlaniec (defense planned for winter 2015). This demonstrates the role of illustrated books and historical narratives in forging collective identities in pre-modern Hungary.
karolina.mroziewicz@onet.pl

Natalia Obukowicz

Natalia Obukowicz is a graduate from the University of Łódź in International Relations (MA) and Romance Philology (MA). Her PhD thesis, written under the supervision of Professor Jan Miernowski, is entitled “Lamentation in Polemical literature during the French Wars of Religion,” and will be defended in January 2015. Her intellectual interests revolve around French Renaissance literature, early modern polemics and crisis-related discourse.
n.obukowicz@gmail.com

Krzysztof Skonieczny

Krzysztof Skonieczny graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in Philosophy and in Psychology - both in the course of the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities. He also holds an MA in Psychoanalysis from Paul Valéry University in Montpellier. His research in the International PhD Program focused on animal studies, French theory and psychoanalysis, with occasional forays into 16th- and 17th-century thought (especially Spinoza and Montaigne). During the Program he spent a year as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and one semester at the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours. He defended his PhD thesis, “The Animal and the Human. A Perspective of Immanence,” written under the supervision of Professor Szymon Wróbel, on November 20th 2014 at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Instytut Filozofii I Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk). Aside from his academic occupations, he also works as a literary translator and playsguitar in a rock'n'roll band.
kaskonieczny@gmail.com

Bogdan Trifunović

Bogdan Trifunović is a graduate of the University of Belgrade in Modern History and a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw in the International PhD Program. His PhD thesis “Collective Memory and the Sites of Memory in the Serbian Discourse of Old Serbia” investigates the culture of memory which influenced the development of Serbian national identity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This thesis is supervised by Professor Jolanta Sujecka (Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw) and will have been defended by February 2015. Bogdan's academic interests include the fields of social and cultural history of the Balkans and Europe in the 19th and the 20th centuries, the First World War, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the digital humanities.
b.trifunovic@obta.uw.edu.pl, btrifunovic@gmail.com

Kamil Wielecki

Kamil Wielecki graduated from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology (MA) and Institute of Philosophy (MA), both at the University of Warsaw. He has undertaken ethnographic fieldwork research in Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. During the International PhD Program he spent a year as a Visiting Scholar at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and three months at the Central European University (Budapest). Under the supervision of Professor Jan Kieniewicz he is preparing a PhD thesis entitled “Coping with Uncertainty. Petty Traders in Post-Soviet Krasnoyarsk,” which he is going to defend in May 2015. His areas of interest include post-socialism studies, the political economy of capitalism, globalization, and economic and philosophical anthropology.
kamil.wielecki@gmail.com

Oksana Zakhutska

Oksana Zakhutska graduated with honors from Kamieniec Podolski National University in Ukraine in English and Polish Languages and Literature (2008). Within the International PhD Program at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” of the University of Warsaw she worked on the Polish language in Ukraine under the supervision of Professor Janusz Rieger. She defended her PhD thesis entitled “The Polish Language of the Petty Nobility Village of Siaberka in Volhynia. Vocabulary” in December 2014. During her PhD studies she spent six months as a visiting scholar at the University of Vienna, Austria, and two months at the University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, Macedonia. Her intellectual interests include linguistic contacts and sociolinguistics, lexicography and translation studies.
oksana.zakhutska@obta.uw.edu.pl; oksana.zov@gmail.com

PROFESSORS:

Maciej Abramowicz, “Artes Liberales,” Univesity of Warsaw, is a specialist in French literature and culture, especially of the medieval period. His other interests include French-Canadian literature and culture as well as ethnolinguistics.

Prof. Jerzy Axer, IBI AL University of Warsaw, is the founder and director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, MSH (International School of Humanities), MISH (Interdepartmental Individual Studies in the Humanities), Academia Artes Liberales and Collegium Artes Liberales; author of many international academic co-operation initiatives and research projects and of over three hundred scholarly publications, with interests ranging from classical Latin and neo-Latin, through reception of classical tradition in the European culture to history of drama and theatre.

Prof. Maria Kalinowska, IBI AL University of Warsaw, is a renowned specialist of Polish literature, with a particular interest in the “great Polish Romantic poets”(Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Norwid) in the area of dramatic structure and questions of existence. She has conducted research into Romantic drama and its theatrical performances, textual criticism of Romantic literature (especially Mickiewicz), and into Romantic reception of classical antiquity, their Hellenism and approach to ancient and modern Greece

Prof. Jan Kieniewicz, IBI AL University of Warsaw, is a renowned historian, author of dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly articles. He specializes in the history of India and pre-colonial expansion, modern and contemporary Spain, history of Poland and Europe. For the last 15 years, prof. Kieniewicz conducts research into comparative history of civilizations and directs research programs, such as Polono-Spanish Corpus Diplomaticum and Silent Intelligentsia. A Study of Cvilizational Opression.

Prof. Ewa Łukaszyk, IBI AL University of Warsaw, currently works on concepts of culture and civilization, conditions for circulation of ideas across intercultural barriers, supra-religious and supra-cultural communities of intellectuals, concept of empire as a space for interchange and spreading of ideas; oppression versus “seduction of civilization” in imperial and post-imperial / post-colonial context. Prof. Ewa Lukaszyk's Blog.

Jan Miernowski’s research and teaching interests focus on the aesthetic response of literature to the diverse discourses of early modern philosophy, theology, science and politics. His doctoral thesis was devoted to the poetic expression of Renaissance logic. The subsequent books comprise a wide-ranging study of the impact of negative theology on French 16th-century poetry, on Medieval and Renaissance philosophy, as well as specifically on the poetics of Montaigne’s skepticism. He published in Polish a monograph on allegory in French literature from the Roman de la rose to Pascal, and a co-authored critical edition of poetry by Peletier du Mans. Jan Miernowski’s most recent books include a monograph on the aesthetics of hatred in French and Francophone literature from the 16th to the 21st century, as well as an edited volume on the interplay between the grotesque and the sublime. He is currently working on the philosophical and literary conceptions of humanism in the 16th and in the 20th centuries.

Prof. Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa, IBI AL University of Warsaw, is a renowned scholar in the field of Renaissance and Baroque culture and literature. She has extensively published on these topics.

Prof. Joanna Partyka, IBI AL University of Warsaw, is interested mainly in the culture of 16th -17th centuries as a source of anthropological, sociological and psychological ideas. She based her research on little known paraliterary texts (encyclopaedias, moral and pedagogical treatises, guides for hearing confessions, ephemeral publications, diaries, almanacs, travelogues, letters etc.). She examines old Polish literature and culture in the European context with an emphasis on Mediterranean countries. She specialized in women’s literature of the Early Modern period.

Prof. Janusz Rieger, IBI AL University of Warsaw, an eminent slavist, has done acclaimed research of the Polish language in the East, Ukrainian dialectology, slavonic onomastics, history of Ukrainian and Russian languages, contacts between languauges, and lexicography.

Professor Jolanta Sujecka, “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw, is both author and editor of books on Balkan and Slavonic literatures and cultures during times of change. She has conducted research on various ways of expressing the concept of identity in the area of the Balkan Slavia Orthodoxa. She has also done extensive research on “places of memory” in the Balkans and the so-called “contrary tradition,” especially in the Macedonian-Bulgarian and Macedonian-Serbian borderlands. The fruit of this fascination with the Balkans was the work Macedonia: Land, Region, Borderland (2013), prepared in collaboration with Mrs. Olimpia Dragouni and Mr. Bogdan Trifunović, PhD students from the International PhD Program (MPD), and with scholars from Macedonia, Greece, Serbia and Poland.

Prof. Szymon Wróbel, IBI AL University of Warsaw, has studied contemporary political theory, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, philosophy of language. In the area of social theory, he is interested in the modern concepts of power. He has conducted research on the theory of mind and language, the unconscious mechanisms of processing information, and sources of socialization. He teaches contemporary philosophy of language, history of philosophy and theory of reading and criticism of philosophical texts.

Prof. Piotr Wilczek, IBI AL, University of Warsaw, is an accomplished scholar in the fields of comparative literature and culture, reception of antiquity and Bible in modern literature, literary canon, Renaissance and Reformation culture, history of Polish and English literature (especially 16th-17th centuries), theory and practice of artistic translation, and rhetoric.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS:

Dr Simon Burton, “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw, is a historical theologian who specializes in the late medieval and early modern periods. He has particular interests in the movements of Reformed scholasticism and “universal reformation,“ as well as the long history of the Augustinian and Platonic traditions in Christian thought.

Malgorzata Kot, PhD, “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw, is a specialist in Stone Age Archaeology, interested especially in the Palaeolithic period and Neanderthals, especially their technical and mental abilities. She conducts archaeological fieldwork in Uzbekistan seeking for evidence of cultural relations between Neanderthals, homo sapiens and homo Denisovans.