On November 25–26, 2022 the Young Sociologists Forum was held at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. During this event, members of the QDA team – Dr. Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek and Maciej Melon – presented a paper on the archiving and sharing of social research data. They also introduced the audience to the functioning of the Social Data Repository.

In November 2022, the QDA team co-organized a series of three seminars under a common title ‘Biographical Sociology and Oral History in Poland (Review of Good Neighbor Relationships)’.

Idea

Oral history and sociological biographical research are close to each other. In the Polish context, this neighborliness is particularly intense – one can even speak of an intersection, or even a partial overlap, between the two approaches and research practices. Oral history researchers are eager to use the theoretical and methodological background of biographical sociology. Sociologists are active in oral history research and documentation projects.

This intensive collaboration, however, does not invalidate important questions about the similarities and differences between these – intrinsically heterogeneous – ways of recording, analyzing and interpreting the individual and collective experiences of our interlocutors, interviewees, or witnesses to history.

We believe it is a good time to bring together practitioners and theorists of sociological biographical research and oral history to update and re-discuss some of these questions. We have arranged the issues for discussion into three groups, choosing the category of experience (biographical, social, historical, but also research experience) as central to both approaches, though not necessarily defined in the same way.

Program

Panel I – November 10, 2022, Łódź

Biographical sociology: theory – method – practice. What actually happens, between the meeting with the person and the scientific text?

Panelists: Professor Adam Mrozowicki, Professor Katarzyna Waniek, Professor Agnieszka Golczyńska-Grondas, Professor Mariusz Granosik, Dr. Jerzy Stachowiak

Panel II – November 16, 2022, Warszawa

The category of experience in sociology and oral history. What does biographical sociology speak about, and what does oral history speak about?

Panelists: Professor Kaja Kaźmierska, Dr. Jakub Gałęziowski, Dr. Andrzej Czyżewski, Dr. Anna Wylegała, Dr. Dominik Czapigo, Dr. Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek (moderator)

Panel III – November 23, 2022, Wrocław

Oral history: practice – method – theory. What kind of past does oral history re/construct and why?

Panelists: Professor Marta Kurkowska-Budzan, Professor Dobrochna Kałwa, Dr. Piotr Filipkowski, Dr. Marcin Stasiak, Dr. Marcin Jarząbek, Dr. Katarzyna Bock-Matuszyk

Organizers: The Depot History Centre, The ‘Remembrance and Future’ Center, Polish Oral History Association, Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History, Polish Sociological Association, Center for Biographical Research and Oral History of the University of Łódź, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (in particular: the Qualitative Data Archive).

Organizing Committee: Piotr Filipkowski, Ewa Maj, Katarzyna Waniek, Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek

Event on Facebook

On October 20, 2022, Maciej Melon presented the Qualitative Data Archive to the participants of the third edition of the Data Steward School, organized by Visnea company.

In the first part of the meeting, Maciej Melon presented the history of the Archive and outlined its current tasks related to the preservation of the cultural heritage of social sciences, data reinterpretation and research revisits. He also pointed to the transparency of methods and tools used by researchers, which the Archive promotes.

The second part was more of a workshop, describing the Archive’s tasks related to the day-to-day work on archiving and making research data available. There was considerable discussion on issues and concerns, such as the impact of anonymisation on the subsequent usability of data or the tension between making data open and protecting the rights of those being interviewed. There were also technical questions, related to file formats or the types of licences used in QDA.

We are grateful for the invitation and the opportunity to share our experiences!

A new dataset entitled “Communicational Aspects of the Social Dissent over the Evaluation of the Polish Systemic Transition and Democracy: A Preliminary Study on the Discursive Awareness of the Symbolic Elites” has been published in the QDA. The author of the dataset is Dr. Magdalena Nowicka-Franczak. The dataset contains 21 transcriptions of interviews with journalists, columnists, and public intellectuals, who work or cooperate with nationwide opinion-making media. The study, conducted in 2021, aimed at analyzing a discursive awareness of media symbolic elites, that is, their beliefs on how public discourse influences social reality, competence to distinguish discourse constructs from empirical reality, and readiness to critically assess their discourse. The study was conducted under (Polish) National Science Center grant 2020/04/X/HS6/00110.

A new dataset entitled “Between Art and Research: Evaluation of Creative Arts in Performance-Based Research Funding Systems” has been published in the QDA. The author of the dataset is Dr. Karolina Lewandowska. The dataset contains 40 anonymized transcriptions of interviews with employees of Polish public art universities and art departments operating at universities with a general academic profile. The aim of the study was to identify the impact of the evaluation of the quality of scientific activity on employees of art universities and faculties in Poland. The study was conducted under National Science Center grant 2019/35/D/HS5/00009.

On September 21-23, 2022, the 5th Polish Political Science Congress “Politics of (Dis)order” took place in Wrocław. During a workshop held as part of the Congress, Dr. Joanna Gajda encouraged political scientists to deposit data in the Qualitative Data Archive. We thank Dr. Gajda for promoting the Archive and invite researchers in the field of political science to contact us!

A new dataset entitled “Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe – Research in Polish Schools” has been published in the QDA.

The dataset contains qualitative data from the fieldwork with children, collected in the years 2019–2021 as part of the MiCREATE project (Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe). These are recordings and transcripts of interviews and focus groups with children, migration experts, and education professionals, including teachers.

MiCREATE, Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe, is a European project funded under Horizon 2020. The overall aim of the project is to stimulate the inclusion of different groups of migrant children in schools and host communities by adopting a child-centered approach to the integration of migrant children at the level of education and social policy. More information about the project can be found at http://micreate.eu.

On 13 April 2022, we had the opportunity and pleasure to present our Archive during the course ‘Oral history and biographical research in the historian’s workshop,’ conducted at the Art History Institute (Faculty of Cultural and Art Sciences, University of Warsaw) by Prof. Jerzy Kochanowski and Dr. Jakub Gałęziowski. Thank you for the invitation!

On March 16, 2022, at the Center for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin a discussion took place about the book In den Stürmen der Transformation. Zwei Werften zwischen Sozialismus und EU (Suhrkamp Verlag 2022). Piotr Filipkowski, an organizer of the event and co-author of the book, presented a methodological paper in which he recalled Andrzej Siciński’s research on lifestyles from the late 1970s. Among the families interviewed at that time were shipyard workers from Gdańsk. Materials from that study are available in the Qualitative Data Archive of IFiS PAN (collection “Lifestyles in Polish Cities”).

A new dataset entitled “Doyens of Polish Sociology of Work” has been published in the QDA. The author of the collection is Dr. Olga Czeranowska from the SWPS University. The dataset is a result of the “Doyens of Polish Sociology of Work on the Processes of Institutionalization, Crisis, and the Prospects for Development of the Sub-discipline” project, carried out by the Sociology of Work Section of the Polish Sociological Association. The project was based on research conducted through in-depth interviews (with elements of biographical narration) with persons who have contributed to the institutionalization of sociology of work and the development of labor studies in Poland. The study included both the activities of sociologists-practitioners, who were present in factories during the communist era, and sociologists-academics, who focused on research and teaching. The dataset contains 19 interviews, conducted between 2016 and 2018.