Month: October 2025

The first Oral History Seminar of the 2025/2026 academic year took place on October 22, 2025, at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The seminar focused on an interview with Ms. Róża Karwowska, recorded in Cieszyn by Dr. Jolanta Epstein (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences) as part of the project “Czechoslovak-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in the Cold War Between High Politics and Individual Strategies”. This interview is part of a collection of biographical recordings conducted with the families of doctors and medical professionals associated with the Silesian Hospital in Cieszyn.

This year, the Oral History Seminars will take place in various cities across Poland. Scheduled dates are: December 3, 2025 (Wrocław), January 29, 2026 (Gdańsk), February 25, 2026 (Warsaw), March 27, 2026 (Łódź), April 22, 2026 (Kraków), May 27, 2026 (Warsaw), and June 17, 2026 (Lublin).

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej” („Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History”). More information can be obtained at: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

The Qualitative Data Archive of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN) collects and provides access, via the Social Data Repository, to qualitative research materials originating from social research. To enable the sharing of other types of data produced or collected by IFiS PAN researchers, the Institute has created its own collection in the RepOD Open Data Repository.

On 22 October 2025, Maciej Melon, who administers the collection, participated in a meeting of representatives of institutions managing their own collections in RepOD. The aim of the meeting was to present selected collections — including the one maintained by IFiS PAN — and to discuss the principles for verifying shared datasets. Approximately 60 administrators of institutional collections took part in the event. The meeting was organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw.

The IFiS PAN collection is available here: https://repod.icm.edu.pl/dataverse/ifis