Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek

On February 28, an Oral History Seminar was held at IFiS PAN. Participants analyzed an interview with a man born in 1934, who spent his childhood, including the World War II period, in Białowieża. The interview was conducted by Ms. Katarzyna Winiarska, a cultural animator and educator associated with the Białowieża Forest, the creator of the Virtual Museum of Jewish History in Białowieża, and a doctoral student at the Doctoral School of Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw. The recording is part of a collection of interviews she gathered to document the history of Białowieża’s Jewish community.

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

On January 24, 2024, the subsequent Oral History Seminar took place at IFiS PAN. During the meeting, Dr. Tomáš W. Pavlíček and Barbora Kulawiaková from the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, presented an interview with a woman, a Polish professor of mathematics. The interview is part of the project titled ‘Czechoslovak-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in the Cold War Between High Politics and Individual Strategies’ (funded by the National Science Centre, poland, OPUS LAP NCN – LA GACR, 2021/22-2024), led by Tomáš W. Pavlíček and Jan Surman from the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The project aims to document and analyze Polish-Czech scientific networks among mathematicians and physicists in the second half of the 20th century, including contacts, inspirations, joint research, conferences, publications, and research visits. The main theme of the seminar was the relationship between the ‘internal’ development of mathematics and its social and cultural history.

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej (Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History)”. If you would like to participate in future meetings or receive more information, please contact us: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

Participants in the seminar, held at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences on December 20, 2023, analyzed an interview from the project “Oral history of the LGBT+ community in Poland,” which was conducted by the Lambda Warsaw Association in cooperation with the History Meeting House. The interview was conducted and presented by Adrianna Kapała, a historian, archivist, and PhD student at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. She is also the coordinator of training and education at the Centre of Community Archives.

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej (Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History)”.

If you would like to participate in future meetings or receive more information, please contact us: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

A first version of a dataset titled ‘Resettlement in the Revitalization of Polish Cities: Individual In-depth Interviews with Tenants from Łódź, Warsaw, and Wałbrzych,’ authored by Dr. Barbara Audycka, has been published in the QDA.

The provided data are the result of a research conducted on revitalization-related resettlements in Polish cities. The research aimed to: (1) analyze the practical organization of relocations by local authorities, (2) gather information on opinions, attitudes, and actions of relocated tenants within the municipal housing stock. The study involved tenants residing in buildings within revitalization areas earmarked for major renovations requiring the residents to move out.

The research was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (under the Miniatura grant), and the University of Warsaw (IDUB program).

The current version of the dataset contains interview transcripts from Warsaw and Łódź, as well as contextual materials. Transcripts from Wałbrzych will be included in the next version of the dataset.

On November 22, 2023, the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN) hosted an Oral History Seminar, during which participants analyzed an interview with a renowned film critic, theater scholar, and journalist. The interview was conducted by Anna Michalska, an employee of the Museum of Cinematography in Łódź and a co-author of articles and books on cinematography, as well as a doctoral student at the Doctoral School of Humanities at the University of Łódź. The interview was conducted for the purposes of the Archive of Oral History, which is being created by Ms. Michalska as part of the Museum.

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej (Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History)”. If you would like to participate in future meetings or receive more information, please contact us: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

Two interconnected datasets, collectively titled ‘Multilevel Governance of the Humanitarian Crisis Caused by the Russian Aggression on Ukraine: Examples from Activities in the Lubelskie Voivodeship (PL) and the Volyn Oblast (UA),’ have been published in the QDA. These collections differ in the language of the data (Polish/Ukrainian) and comprise transcripts of focus groups conducted in Lublin (Poland) and Lutsk (Ukraine). The focus group participants represented various stakeholders involved in aid activities, including representatives from central administrations in the regions, local governments, social organizations, businesses, religious organizations, and informal initiatives. The author of the collections is Dr. Karolina Podgórska from Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin.

The Oral History Seminars, which commenced as a pilot series this spring at IFIS PAN, are set to continue. On October 25, 2023, the inaugural meeting for the new academic year occurred. During this session, participants analyzed an interview from the project titled ‘Memory and Oblivion: Sociocultural Post-War Changes in Hausdorf/Jugów in the Owl Mountains.’ This project was conducted collaboratively by the Women’s Foundation from Krakow, Integrationswerk RESPEKT e.V. from Berlin, and the Hendernyj Informacijno-Anality Center KRONA from Kharkiv. Alina Doboszewska, the project coordinator, provided the introduction to the narrative. The interview under scrutiny was recorded in 2010 and featured two female narrators, one born in 1925 and the other in 1930.

The Oral History Seminars are organized by the QDA, the Polish Oral History Association and the Faculty of Culture and Arts of the University of Warsaw. They are held under the patronage of the ‘Wroclaw Oral History Yearbook.’

A new collection entitled ‘Precarious Careers and Turning Points in Life’ has been published in the QDA. It is authored by Stefan Bieńkowski and Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek.
The collection contains materials from a small pilot study on the occupational (and biographical) trajectories of female retirees receiving low pension benefits.

On May 24th, the fifth Oral History Seminar took place at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN). It was the last meeting in the pilot cycle. The subject of analysis was one of the interviews conducted in 2021-2023 by Dr. Marcin Jarząbek (Jagiellonian University) with individuals who had worked at the Polish State Railways (PKP) or in one of the companies that had emerged after the division and commercialization of PKP.

The interviews gathered by Dr. Jarząbek were autobiographical in nature, but the main area of focus was the professional work of the interviewees. Dr. Jarząbek aims to write a monograph on the socio-cultural history of labor in PKP during the second half of the 20th century and in the beginning of the 21st century. The work will be based on the interviews, archival research, and analysis of other materials from that era. During the seminar, we analyzed an interview with a PKP commercial service employee from southwestern Poland.

Over 20 people from several research centers in Poland participated in the meeting. At the end, the organizers encouraged participants to complete an evaluation survey, which will help in deciding whether to continue the project in the upcoming academic year. The pilot cycle of the Oral History Seminars was organized by the QDA, the Polish Oral History Association and the Faculty of Culture and Arts of the University of Warsaw.

A book based on interviews archived in the QDA has just been published. Ryszard Jamka’s monograph titled “Panów piłą. Trzy legendy o Jakubie Szeli [Sawing the Nobility. Three Legends of Jakub Szela]” utilizes materials from research organized in 1950 by the Department of Sociology at the University of Warsaw, under the leadership of Stanisław Ossowski. That research focused on the memory of the Galician Slaughter in the Podkarpacie region (in Jakub Szela’s hometown) and near Tarnów (Małopolska region). Shortly after the completion of the research, the Polish authorities began to eliminate sociology as a separate academic field in Poland. The sociological departments at the University of Warsaw were dissolved, and Stanisław Ossowski was removed from teaching. Consequently, the research materials were not processed at that time. Currently, they are made available for scientific purposes in the QDA (dataset titled “Jasło Research by Stanisław Ossowski’s Team on Jakub Szela”).