Dr. Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska from the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences spoke about the emergence of new cultures in post-settlement areas. She was another speaker at the Interdisciplinary Scientific Seminar at Wroclaw Tech. The researcher gave a lecture on April 17 titled "City-makers - the double life of reclaimed cities."

Dr. Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska deals with ethnology, cultural studies, Bohemian studies. She investigates the peculiarities of post-World War II resettlements in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and analyzes the new settlers’ experience with regard to things left by previous residents.

The researcher assumes that old objects act as ghosts of the previous culture and keep new residents interacting with the “ghostly” presence of the displaced.

Dr. Ćwiek-Rogalska had been a Fulbright Fellow and a laureate of two National Science Centre (NCN) grants. In 2022, she won a Scientific Award of “Polityka” weekly. Currently, she has been implementing her groundbreaking project “Recycling the German Ghosts. Resettlement Cultures in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia after 1945” financed within the prestigious ERC Starting Grant scheme.

(fot. Leszek Zych/Polityka)