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On October 23, during the Oral History Seminar, Ms. Karolina Domańska presented an interview from her research on the popularity of American basketball in Poland in the 1990s. She used this research in her master’s thesis, titled The Popularity of American Basketball as a Cultural Phenomenon in Poland during the Transition Period in the 1990s (The Case of the Southwestern Voivodeships), which she wrote under the supervision of Dr. Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, Professor at Jagiellonian University. The thesis was awarded twice.

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.

On September 25, 2024, the first Oral History Seminar of the 2024/2025 academic year took place. Participants analyzed two transcriptions of interviews conducted as part of the project titled “‘Paltry Pensions’ in the Context of the Sense of Social Justice and the Goals of Pension Policy. A Multidimensional Sociological Analysis.” This project, funded by the National Science Center, Poland (grant number 2021/41/B/HS6/04416), is currently underway at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, under the direction of Dr. Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek. During the seminar, the analysis of the interview content was accompanied by a discussion of methodological issues. The handling of personal data of research participants in relation to archiving audio recordings of sociological research was also addressed.

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.

New Dataset: ‘Housing Tenure and Dwelling in Social Housing Associations’

A new dataset titled ‘Housing Tenure and Dwelling in Social Housing Associations – IDI Interviews with Residents of TBS Warszawa Północ Housing Stock’ has been published in the QDA. The dataset contains 10 transcripts of interviews conducted in the spring of 2024 in Warsaw by Ms. Klara Lewandowska as part of her bachelor’s thesis research at the University of Warsaw.

In May 2024, Dr. Michał Przeperski published the book  Dziki Wschód. Transformacja po polsku 1986-1993 [Wild East. Transformation in Polish 1986-1993] (Wydawnictwo Literackie Publishers, Cracow 2024). Among other sources, the book uses interviews from the dataset ‘Narratives of political and economic transition, 1995’ – a collection of interviews conducted by Dr. Denise V. Powers, available at QDA.

The last Oral History Seminar of the 2023/2024 academic year took place on May 22, 2024, with an introduction by Dominik Czapigo (KARTA Center). Participants analyzed two accounts recorded as part of the documentary project ‘Poles in the East,’ carried out from 2006 to 2011 by the KARTA Center and the History Meeting House, which jointly run the Oral History Archive. During the project, numerous trips were organized to seven countries (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, Romania, and Ukraine), during which the stories of 1,075 interviewees were recorded and nearly 4,300 archival materials were scanned. These materials were then—thanks to a grant from the National Program for the Development of the Humanities—compiled and prepared for release. One of the results of the project was the publication Polacy na Wschodzie. Historie mówione [Poles in the East. Oral Histories]. More information can be found on the project website: www.polacynawschodzie.pl.

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 at: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

On April 24, 2024, the subsequent Oral History Seminar took place at IFiS PAN. During the meeting, Dr. Marcin Chorązki (Institute of National Remembrance, Branch in Cracow) presented an interview with a woman representing the former social class of Polish landowners. The interview was conducted in 2015 as part of research into the fate of landowners in the People’s Republic of Poland.

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 new dataset titled ‘The Young and the Pandemic’ has been published in the QDA. Its author is Professor Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz (University of Warsaw).

The dataset contains materials collected by the Childhood Studies Interdisciplinary Research Team (University of Warsaw) as part of three research projects: two already completed (‘Children’s pandemic archive’ and ‘Change. Children’s pandemic experience’) and one ongoing (‘Pandemic and post-pandemic children’s worlds’). The projects aim to explore children’s experiences and opinions on the COVID-19 pandemic from a childhood studies perspective. The dataset contains diverse materials, including children’s drawings and letters, transcriptions of their statements, interviews with adult experts, information leaflets on one of the studies, and a calendar of the pandemic.

The second, extended version of the dataset ‘Resettlement in the Revitalization of Polish Cities: Individual In-depth Interviews with Tenants from Łódź, Warsaw, and Wałbrzych’ has been published in ADJ. The dataset was supplemented with 26 transcriptions of interviews conducted in 2023 in Walbrzych, and 14 transcriptions of interviews conducted in 2022 in Warsaw.

A new dataset titled ‘Following the Smartphone: Ethnography of the Emergent Urban Cultures of Networked Individuals’ has been published in the QDA. Its author is Dr. Mirosław Filiciak, Assistant Professor at the SWPS University. The project from which the data came was devoted to the use of smartphones in the big city. The researchers explored how individuals representing diverse social groups (with different social status, levels of education, income, and age) use new personalized, portable technologies, understood as carriers of networked individualism. The study was conducted in 2021-2023 in Warsaw. The researchers conducted nearly 120 interviews (including expert interviews) and observations. Due to the lack of respondents’ consents, only 15 interview transcriptions are available in the QDA.

The study was funded by the National Science Centre under grant no. 2019/33/B/HS2/02856.

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.