Agnieszka Kościańska received her PhD (2007) and habilitation (2015) in ethnology/cultural anthropology from the University of Warsaw, Poland. She is an associate professor in the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, sexual violence, religion, and anthropology of science. Now she also is a senior researcher in a HERA grant (Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures) and a research partner in a POLONEZ 2 grant (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie/National Science Center Poland; Birth control cultures in Poland 1945–1989). She was a visiting scholar at Harvard University (2010-2011, Marie Curie fellowship), the New School for Social Research (2006, Kosciuszko Foundation grant), the University of Copenhagen (2005, Danish Governmental scholarship), Edinburgh College of Art (2017, European Visiting Research Fellowship by the Caledonian Research Foundation and the Royal Society of Edinburgh) and a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena (2016, 2017-2018).
She is the author of Zobaczyć łosia (To See a Moose. The History of Polish Sex Education from the First Lesson to the Internet, 2017), Płeć przyjemność i przemoc (Gender, Pleasure and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland 2014), Potęga ciszy (The Power of silence: Gender and Religious Conversion. The Case of a New Religious Movement, the Brahma Kumaris, 2009) and (co-)editor of several volumes and journal special issues on gender and sexuality – the most recent being in English ‘The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: Naturalizing and modernizing Europe’s East, past and present’ Sexualities, no. 1-2 2016 (with Hadley Renkin); in Polish Różowy język (Pink Tongue), InterAlia. Pismo poświęcone studiom queer/InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies, no. 14 (with Karolina Morawska, Jędrzeja Burszta and Tomasz Basiuk).
gender, sexuality, sex education, religion, history of science, history of sexuality, race, racism, neo conservatism, engaged anthropology, Poland, Central Europe
Agnieszka Kościańska received her PhD (2007) and habilitation (2015) in ethnology/cultural anthropology from the University of Warsaw, Poland. In 2013-2016 she served as Deputy Director. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, sexual violence, religion, and anthropology of science. In her doctoral dissertation and her book The Power of Silence (2009, in Polish) she focused on gender and religious conversion. She conducted her ethnographic fieldwork among members of a Hindu-rooted new religious movement, the Brahma Kumaris in Poland. She shows how identity and agency of Brahma Kumari converts, mostly women, are redefined within the conversion process, and how a woman's new identity, performance and agency, based on silence, meditation, ascetic life-style and spirituality, influence her family kin networks and workplace, and engender new forms of social life. Moreover, she analyses the case of the Brahma Kumaris in relation to the development of feminism in Poland. She shows that for her interview partners, conversion to the Brahma Kumaris and conforming to the strict ascetic discipline are ways of dealing with gender related discontent. She argues that religion is an important element of women's identities in Poland. Her inquiry suggests that lack of spirituality within Polish feminist milieus and feminist emphasis on the liberal agency are main obstacles to the further development of feminism in the country.
Kościańska’s second book (Gender, Pleasure and Violence, 2014, in Polish) is an analysis of the development of expert knowledge of sexuality (especially sexological knowledge) in Poland in the period from the end of the 1960s to present. She takes a constructivist approach to expert discourse (she assumes that expert knowledge is an important factor constructing sexuality: it naturalizes and normalizes certain behaviours and identities, while others are denied the status of normality and naturalness). Therefore this book is also a story about the history of sexuality in Poland under communism and the changes that have taken place within it as a result of the postsocialist transformation. Kościańska shows how experts write about pleasure and violence, and how in relation to these categories the notion of gender is defined. Her newest monograph (To See a Moose, 2017, in Polish) presents the history of Polish sex education in the 20th century.
She is the co-editor of Anthropology against Discrimination (in Polish, 2015, with Kamila Dąbrowska and Magdalena Grabowska), Gender: An Anthropological Perspective (in Polish, 2007, with Renata E. Hryciuk), Women and Religions (in Polish, 2006, with Katarzyna Leszczyńska) and special issues of Focaal (‘The East speaks back: Gender and sexuality in postsocialist Europe’, no. 53, 2009, with Jill Owczarzak) and Sexualities (‘The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: Naturalizing and modernizing Europe's East, past and present’, vol. 19, no. 1-2, 2016, with Hadley Z. Renkin ), and the editor of a volume on anthropology of sexuality (in Polish, 2012).
More: akoscianska.pl
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2019-2021. Polish PI: Scientific Research Network funded by Research Foundation – Flanders, Medicine and Catholicism since the late 19th Century.
2016–2019. Senior Researcher: Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) grant, research programme Uses of the Past II; project title: Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures. Project leader: Glyn Davis (University of Edinburgh); principal investigator in Poland: Tomasz Basiuk (University of Warsaw).
2017-2019. Research partner: POLONEZ 2 (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie/National Science Center Poland); project title Birth control cultures in Poland 1945–1989, PI: Agata Ignaciuk.
2010-2012. Fellow: Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship for Career Development (Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union) -- Harvard University, University of Warsaw; title: Biomedicalizing Gender. The Globalization of Sexual Science and the Redefinition of Gender Roles in Poland.
Selected conference papers and invited lectures
Organized Panels, Conferences, Summers Schools
1. European Association of Social Anthropologists.
2. Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze (Polish Ethnological Society).
3. The Polish Studies Association.