Disterrmem– Disputed Territories & Memory
DisTerrMem is a project run by a consortium of six organisations from four countries: Poland, Great Britain, Armenia and Pakistan. We examine the role of competing memories of disputed territories – that is, those for which political battles are fought between several countries (e.g. for Nagorno-Karabakh – between Armenia and Azerbaijan). We are considering how to manage competitive memories in such a way as to weaken regional political conflicts and foster peace-building. See more at: www.disterrmem.eu.
Funding Institution: European Commission (HORIZON2020).
Duration: 2019-2022.
PI: Christina Horvath, PhD (University of Bath – Chief Coordinator); Tomasz Rawski, PhD (Warsaw University – Polish team).
Responsiblities: Coordinator of the Polish team
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RePast – Revisiting the Past, Anticipating the Future
RePAST is a Horizon 2020 funded project that aims at investigating how European societies deal with their troubled pasts today through the analysis of conflict discourses rooted in those pasts, with a view on the impact of those discourses on European integration. It will implement actions and propose strategies, both at the levels of policy-making and civil society, for reflecting upon these discourses to strengthen European integration. It will also take into account how the current crisis in its multiple forms (economic crisis, refugee crisis, political crisis) mediates these narratives. See more at: www.repast.eu
Funding Institution: European Commission (HORIZON2020).
Duration: 2018-2020.
PI: Dimitra Milioni, PhD. (REPAST coordinator); Katarzyna Bojarska, PhD. (Polish Team Coordinator).
Responsiblities: Researcher in the media analysis section. I study Polish media discourse after 1989 regarding the difficult past (World War II and communism). I conduct sociologically oriented, qualitative analysis of the content of journalistic articles and interviews (IDI) with leading Polish journalists. I also conduct focus interviews (FGI) on the difficult past.
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Bosniak Nationalism. Strategies of Community Boundary-Making
The project included a rethinking of one of the basic mechanisms of nationalist politics, i.e. the mechanism of distinguishing between “us” and “them”, based on the example of Bosniak nationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995. I analyzed the strategies of creating cultural borders of the Bosniak nation used by the main political actors in Bosnia at the level of the official memory politics regarding three key events of the last civil war (1992-1995): the massacre in Srebrenica, the siege of Sarajevo and the battles for Mostar. See more at: https://projekty.ncn.gov.pl/opisy/324125-pl.pdf.
Funding Institution: Polish National Science Center (ETIUDA 4)
Duration: 2016-2018.
PI: Tomasz Rawski (Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw).
Responsibilities: Head of the Project & Principal Investigator. Planning, organizing, conducting research. Project’s Settlement.
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The Memorial Dimension of the Polish Transition in the Light of Commemorative Resolutions of the Parliament of the Republic of Poland Adopted in 1989-2014
The research focused on the memory dimension of the Polish transition, i.e. the image of the past that emerged from the commemorative resolutions adopted by the Polish parliament between 1989 and 2014. We gathered a unique, coherent and closed body of texts documenting the transformations of this dimension of Polish political life within 25 years after the political transformation. Their detailed elaboration and analysis made it possible to answer a number of important questions, including: whuch characters and events from the past were most often referred to in the official collective memory expressed in parliamentary resolutions? Which periods of the past were most eagerly commemorated? What elements of resolutions caused the greatest disputes in the parliament? What was the range of influence of the adopted resolutions measured by their media resonance? See more at: https://projekty.ncn.gov.pl/index.php?s=8236.
Funding Institution: Polish National Science Center (SONATA 7).
Duration: 2015-2017.
PI: Marcin Napiórkowski, PhD. (Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw).
Responsibilities: Qualitative and quantitative researcher. I co-created a database of commemorative resolutions, and conducted analyses of the legislative process in the context of the official Polish memory politics.
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Contemporary State: Styles of Action
The project posed a question about the role of the contemporary state in the coordination of collective life. The research approached the state in an empirical perspective, i.e. the functions and methods of the state actions in coordinating particular spheres of social life were analyzed. We searched for patterns of the state’s activity, rules organizing its activity, rules binding the repertoire of goals, means and methods of activity. See more at: https://projekty.ncn.gov.pl/index.php?s=752.
Funding Institution: Polish National Science Center (OPUS 4).
Duration: 2013-2016.
PI: prof. Jacek Raciborski (Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw).
Responsibilities: Qualitative researcher. I analysed the symbolic polictics in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s from the point of view of how an independent statehood is symbolically built.
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Logic of Civil Society: Policy of the Protest in New Democracies
The project was an extensive international empirical study on the development of civil society in countries that have recently undergone democratic transformation. The study focused on the structure of civil society, the dynamics of social protests and their impact on the quality of democracy in four countries (Poland, Hungary, South Korea, Taiwan) over two decades, i.e. 1991-2011.
Funding Institutions: National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (USA), Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland) and other.
Period of participation: November 2011 – August 2012.
PI: prof. Jan Kubik (Rutgers University); prof. Grzegorz Ekiert (Harvard University); Michał Wenzel, PhD. (SWPS).
Responsibilities: Coder and quality controller of the database on social protests in Poland.