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Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology 
University of Warsaw

Żurawia 4, 00-503 Warsaw
tel. +48 22 55 316 11/ fax. 22 55 316 12
etnologia@uw.edu.pl

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Professor Agnieszka Kościańska

Professor

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akoscianska@uw.edu.pl
+48 22 553 16 58

Agnieszka Kościańska is a professor in the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. She received her PhD (2007) and habilitation (2015) in ethnology/cultural anthropology from the University of Warsaw, Poland. In 2024, she was named Professor of the Humanities. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, sexual violence, religion, and racism. In 2022-2024 she was the International co-Investigator in Gender Wars: East and South funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and in 2020-2023 the Principal Investigator in Catholicising Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism: Activist Practices and Intimate Negotiations in Poland, 1930-Present funded by the National Science Center Poland. In 2021 and 2022, she was Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (Russian and East European Studies, REES; since then REES Associate). In the past, 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).

Prof. Kościańska is the author of Odejdź. Rzecz o polskim rasizmie (Go Away: On Polish Racism; with Michał Petryk, 2022, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej), Zobaczyć łosia (To See a Moose. The History of Polish Sex Education, Czarne, 2017, English edition Berghahn Books, 2021), Płeć przyjemność i przemoc (Gender, Pleasure and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland, Warsaw University Press, 2014; English edition Indiana University Press 2021), Potęga ciszy (The Power of silence: Gender and Religious Conversion. The Case of a New Religious Movement, the Brahma Kumaris, Warsaw University Press, 2009) and (co-)editor of several volumes and journal special issues on gender and sexuality – the most recent being in English The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe (with Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, Hadley Z. Renkin, 2025); in Polish Odmieńczość. Obywatelstwo seksualne i archiwum (co-edited with Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta, University of Warsaw Press, 2024).

Her teaching on BA, MA and PhD levels has focused around gender, sexuality and discrimination. In 2003, she co-designed and co-taught the first class on the anthropology of gender and sexuality at the University of Warsaw (BA & MA). In 2008, she started a class on gender and sexuality for PhD students at the School of History, University of Warsaw. Having her students in mind, she (co-) edited the first Polish handbook in the anthropology of gender (2 volumes, 2007, new, extended edition 2025), the first Polish reader in the anthropology of sexuality (2012) and the first Polish handbook in social scientific approaches towards discrimination (2015). Today these books are widely used at Polish universities and read by students of various disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities.

 

 More: https://akoscianska.wordpress.com/

Area of interest

gender, sexuality, sex education, religion, history of science, history of sexuality, race, racism, neo conservatism, engaged anthropology, Poland, Central Europe

Biography

Education, Training, Degrees

2024 Professor of the Humanities
2015 Habilitation (in the higher education system in Poland an obligatory degree requiring significant achievements after obtaining a PhD.) University of Warsaw, Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology.
2007     Ph.D. University of Warsaw, Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology, dissertation: Women of Spirit. Religious Conversion and the Reconstruction of Gender Regime. The Case of a New Religious Movement, the Brahma Kumaris
2004     Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institute. Organizer: Transregional Center of Democratic Studies, the New School for Social Research, New York, NY, Krakow, July 11-29
2000     M.A. Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw
1999     European Union Student Exchange Program Tempus (study abroad), Department of Archaeology and Ethnology/Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, January–June

Academic Affiliations

2024-present Full Professor, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, Poland.
2021-2022 Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Russian and East European Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, UK (January 2021-June 2022).
2020-2024 Associate Professor (prof. ucz.), Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, Poland
2015-2020     Associate Professor (adiunkt z habilitacją), Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, Poland
2017-2018     Senior Fellow, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany (October-March)
2017     Visiting Fellow, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK (April-August)
2016     Senior Fellow, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany (August-September)
2013 – 2016     Deputy Director, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, Poland (responsibilities: facilitating international collaboration, acquiring external funding, organizing departamental seminars and  workshops)
2012-2016    Recurring Visiting Professor, Postgraduate Gender Studies Program, Institute for Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
2007–2015    Assistant Professor, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, School of History, University of Warsaw, Poland.
2010-2011    Visiting Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
2006     Visiting Scholar, the New School for Social Research, New York, NY (September-December)
2005     Visiting Scholar, Saxo Institute, Department of European Ethnology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (April-June)

Selected publications

In English:

Books

Special Issues

  • 2016 Sexualities, special issue “The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: naturalizing and modernizing Europe’s east, past and present,” vol. 19, no. 1-2. Co-edited with Hadley Renkin.
  • 2009 Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology, special issue “The East speaks back: Gender and sexuality in postsocialist Europe,” no. 53. Co-edited with Jill Owczarzak.

Journal articles

Book chapters

  • 2025 Introduction. In The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe, edited by Agnieszka Kościańska, Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, Hadley Z. Renkin. London, Routledge, pp. 1-14 (with Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, and Hadley Z. Renkin)
  • 2025 Race on trial: Understanding sexualized racism in socialist and postsocialist Poland. In The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe, edited by Agnieszka Kościańska, Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, Hadley Z. Renkin. London: Routledge, pp. 174-182.
  • 2025 “Fair game for stigmatization due to his predilections”: Homophobia and sexism in the criminological discourse of rape. In The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe, edited by Agnieszka Kościańska, Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, Hadley Z. Renkin. London: Routledge, pp. 386-395. 
  • 2025 “The right to citizenship”: Sexology, homosexuality, and the discourse of rights in socialist Poland in the 1970s.  In The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe, edited by Agnieszka Kościańska, Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, Hadley Z. Renkin. London: Routledge, pp. 430-437.
  • 2024 “There’s a Lot of Talk About Tolerance, but That’s Just Words”: Being Gay in Postsocialist Poland. In Everyday Postsocialism in Eastern Europe: History Doesn’t Travel in One Direction (open access), edited by Jill Massino and Markus Wien. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, pp. 61-80.
  • 2021 “The Handbook of Masturbation and Defloration”: tracing sources of recent neo-conservatism. In: Intimacy and Mobility in an Era of Hardening Borders: Gender, Reproduction, Regulation, edited by Haldis Haukanes and Frances Pine. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2021, pp. 218–234.
  • 2020 “’Treatment is possible and effective’?: Polish sexologists and queers in correspondence in late state socialism”, in Queers in State Socialism, edited by Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta. Routledge, pp. 74-85.
  • 2020. "Sexology". In Companion to Sexuality Studies, ed. Nancy Naples. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 21-39. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111931504...
  • 2019 “Feminist Anthropologists Meet the Ideology of Gender” (co-authored with Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz), in Twilight Zone Anthropology: A Voice from Poland, ed. Michał Buchowski. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing.
  • 2019 Viagra, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology.
  • 2018 Humanae Vitae, Birth Control and the Forgotten History of the Catholic Church in Poland. In: Harris A. (eds) The Schism of ’68. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187-208.
  • 2015 "Feminist and Queer Sex Therapy: The Ethnography of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland". In Hana Cervinkova, Michal Buchowski, Zdenek Uherek eds., Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 131-146.
  • 2015 "The Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality in Poland." In: Waldemar Kuligowski, Richárd Papp, eds., Sterile and isolated? An anthropology today in Hungary and Poland, Poznańskie Studia Etnologiczne nr 17. Poznań-Wielichowo: Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UAM, Wydawnictwo TIPI, pp. 63-74.
  • 2012 "Churches and religious communities in view of LGBT persons." In: M. Makuchowska, M Pawlęga, eds. 2012, Situation of LGBT Persons in Poland. 2010 and 2011 Report, pp. 145-165, trans. Grzegorz Łętowski
  • 2008 "On Celibate Marriages: Conversion to the Brahma Kumaris in Poland.” In: On the Margins of Religion, eds. Pine Frances and Joao de Pina-Cabral. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 168-186.
  • 2008 "Mohair Berets: The Development of Fundamentalism Within the Catholic in Poland." In: The Sociology of Religion. A Substantive and Transdisciplinary Approach, George Lundskow. Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press (A Sage Publications Company), pp. 363-365.
  • 2007 "Healing Practices Among Members of Alternative Spiritual Communities in Poland." In: Verkörperungen. Embodiment, eds. Christina Lammer, Kim Sawchuk, Cathrin Pichler. Vienna: Löcker, pp. 219-234
  • 2004 ‘Anti-cult Movements and Governmental Report on ‘Sects’ and ‘Cults’: the Case of Poland’, in: Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe, ed. James T. Richardson. New York, London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, pp. 267-278.

In French:

  • 2020 ‘Le droit de cité’: Sexologie, homosexualité et le discours des droits de l’homme en Pologne socialiste dans les années 70., Sextant, 37:  135-148
  • 2010 “Les groupes de femmes non féministes. Le mouvement Brahma Kumaris.” Ethnologie Française, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 257-265.
  • 2006 "Réinterprétation du genre: Brahma Kumaris en Pologne." Cahier de publications doctorales, Université Marc Bloch, Mai 2006, no. 7, pp. 119-128.

Publications in Polish

Research projects

2025-2026 Network Member: A Reconsideration of Care: Pursuing Gender-Equal Care for Global Health and Wellbeing, PIs: Ruchira Sen (O.P. Jindal Global University) and Rachel Murphy (University of Oxford). The Academy of Medical Science - Networking Grants - https://acmedsci.ac.uk/networking-grants

2022-present. Member of the Global Experiences of Gender in an Age of Care Crises and Transformations Hub, funded by Social Sciences Division Interdisciplinary Hubs, University of Oxford. Partners: University of Oxford, University of Warszaw, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Lund University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Doshisha University, Freie Universität Berlin, University of Groningen, Universidad de Granada, O.P. Jindal Global University.

2022-2024. International co-Investigator. Gender Wars: East and South, Arts and Humanities Research Council networking grant. Project's partners: University of Oxford, Central European University, Federal University of Bahia, University of Amsterdam, University of Brasilia, University of Warsaw

2020-2022. PI Catholicising Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism: Activist Practices and Intimate Negotiations in Poland, 1930 - Present; Opus 17, National Science Center Poland.

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.

Conferences and visiting lectures

Selected conference papers, roundtable interventions and invited lectures

  • Roundtable panelist (co-panelists: Agnieszka Kosiorowska-Le Rall, Nicolette Makovicky, Frances Pine), Gender Research, Gender Wars, International Conference Celebrating the 90th Anniversary of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw “Togetherness, Solidarity, Relational Knowledge. Towards a Convivial Anthropology”, University of Warsaw, June 9-11, 2025.

  • Bool talk: Agnieszka Kościańska (Warschau), Kateřina Lišková (Prag), Hadley Z. Renkin (Wien), Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe – and beyond Book talk: The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe. Edited By Agnieszka Kościańska, Anita Kurimay, Kateřina Lišková, Hadley Z. Renkin, 2025. Routledge. Osteuropäische Geschichte (Univ. Heidelberg), 29.04.2025.

  • Roundtable panelist (co-panelists: Joanne Meyerowitz,Yale, Wannes Dupont, University of Edinburgh, Camille Robcis, Columbia, Nikita Shepard, Columbia): Histories of Anti-Gender: A Roundtable, European Social Science History Conference, Leiden, the Netherlands, 26-29.03.2025.

  • Roundtable panelist (co-panelists: Anita Kurimay, Bryn Mawr, Kateřina Lišková, Czech Academy of Sciences, Hadley Z. Renkin, CEU): The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality in East Central Europe - Meet the book - book session, European Social Science History Conference, Leiden, the Netherlands, 26-29.03.2025.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Is “natural family planning” really natural? Transnational Catholic expertise during the Cold War. International Conference “Transformations of Postwar Europe: Medicine, Bodies and Technologies”, Sofia, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, ERC Synergy LEVIATHAN project, 27-30.05.2024 (keynote).

  • Agnieszka Kościańska and Agata Ignaciuk: How religion became expertise? Natural family planning and childbirth preparation in late socialist Poland. Expertise in the human sciences during the 20th century in Europe and beyond, Czech Academy of Sciences, 16-18 May 2024, Vila Lanna, Prague.

    Agnieszka Kościańska, Dwurodzicielstwo – macierzyństwo i ojcostwo po katolicku. Seminarium projektu Religia, praktyki macierzyńskie i tożsamość młodych matek na postawie doświadczeń katoliczek i muzułmanek w Polsce, SONATA 15, NCN, 15.05.2024, Instytut Religioznawstwa, Jagiellonian University (invited lecture)

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Catholicsm and reproduction in socialist and postsocialist Poland: “Some arguments used against contraception do not always correspond to reality”/Katalikybė ir reprodukcija socialistinėje ir posocialistinėje Lenkijoje: Kai kurie argumentai prieš kontracepciją ne visada atitinka tikrovę, Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, 18.04.2024 (invited lecture).

  • Agata Ignaciuk, Agnieszka Kościańska, Is Catholic masculinity the answer?, Gender in an Age of Global Care Crisis, St. Antony's College, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, 21-22 March 2024.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Modern catholic women? Polish religious activim of the 1960s. Health Feminism, Reproductive Knowledge and Women’s Activism Across Europe in the long 20th Century, University of Konstanz, 19-21 October 2023 (invited presentation).

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Sexology and the Cold War: Gender, Sexuality and Hierarchy. Beyond Binaries: Gender, Sexuality, and Medicine in Post-War Europe. Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics and Society, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, 9-10.06.2023 (keynote).

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Gender on Trial versus Race on Trial: Sexuality and Race in Socialist Poland, European Social Science History Conference, Gothenburg, 12-15.04.2023.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, New Books session, Sexuality Network, To See a Moose: The History of Polish Sex Education, Berghahn Books, 2021, European Social Science History Conference, Gothenburg, 12-15.04.2023.

  • Roundtable: Liberal practices and conservative global knowledge flows, AHRC Research Network Gender Wars: East and South, 1 Dec 2022 (online) & 14 Dec 2022, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Religion, reproduction and anti-genderism, AHRC Research Network Gender Wars: East and South launch (Roundtable: Dialogues across and between East and South), Nissan Institute Lecture Theatre, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, 20 Oct 2022.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, "People, Not Ideology”: On the struggle for LGBTQ rights in Poland, Leverhulme Lecture, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, Nissan Institute Lecture Theatre, University of Oxford, Tuesday 10 May 2022, https://www.rees.ox.ac.uk/event/people-not-ideology-on-the-s...

  • Roundtable. Gender Wars: East and South, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, Monday 9th of May 2022 (online), 2-4 pm UK time (3-5 pm CET; 11-1 BRT), https://www.rees.ox.ac.uk/event/gender-wars-east-and-south

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, The Power of Conscience: Catholicism and Abortion in Poland, The International Study of Religion in Eastern and Central Europe Association (ISORECEA), 28-30.04.2022 (keynote).

  • Sex during the Cold War: Sex Education in Socialist Poland. Book talk: To See a Moose. Department of History and Civilisation, European University Institute, Florence (online), 13 January 2022, 17:00 – 19:00 CET. https://www.eui.eu/events?id=545644

  • To See a Moose - Leverhulme Lecture & Book Launch, 9 November, Nissan Institute Lecture Theatre, University of Oxford, https://www.rees.ox.ac.uk/event/to-see-a-moose-leverhulme-le...

  • Race on trial: understanding sexualized racism in socialist and postsocialist Poland Part of the RESC Seminar Series: Socialist Histories in Russia, Eastern Europe & Eurasia. University of Oxford, Monday 25 October, https://www.rees.ox.ac.uk/event/race-on-trial-understanding-...

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, A Utopia for the Unborn: Polish Catholic Concepts of Gender Equality in the Family, 27th International Conference of Europeanists, June 21-25, 2021.
  • Roundtable: Reproductive Health Archives in Pandemic Time, the 94th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, May 12-16, 2021.
  • Book Launch: Gender, Pleasure, and Violence at the TCDS NSSR, March 26, 2021
  • Book talk: Gender, Pleasure, and Violence, Department of History, University of Maryland, 14.04.2021.
  • Book talk: Gender, Pleasure, and Violence , Department of Anthropology, Comenius University in Bratislava, 03.05.2021
  • Book discussion: Socialist Sexualities: Expert Knowledge and Intimate Revolutions in Poland and Czechoslovakia, discussion at the Harvard Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, March 31, 2021
  • Book discussion:  Love & Sex Behind the Iron Curtain: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of 20th Cent. E. Europe? REES, U of Pennsylvania, March 17, 2021
  • Feminist Anthropology in Poland. Antropologia feminista no mundo: diálogos transnacionais, Congresso Virtual, Universidade Federal da Bahia, 22-26.02.2021
  • From “The East Speaks Back” to Postcolonialism, Intersectionality, and Gender and Sexuality In Eastern Europe, Gender and Infrastructure: Intersections between Postsocialist and Postcolonial Geographies, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, March 4–5, 2021, with Jill Owczarzak.
  • Agnieszka Kościańska, ‘A woman should follow her own conscience’: Understanding Catholic involvement in demonstrations against the abortion ban in Poland, REES Seminar/Leverhulme Lecture, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, 21.01.2021.
  • Agnieszka Kościańska, “In Search of a New Marriage: Progressive Catholic Activism of the 1960s”. Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Association virtual convention, November 5-8 and 14-15.
  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Historicizing Abortion, Historicizing Catholicism: Religion and Reproductive Rights in Poland. Visegrád Anthropologists’ Network (V4 Net): Locating religion and nonreligion in Eastern/Central Europe, Konstancin-Jeziorna 02-05.09.2020.
  • Agnieszka Kościańska, Beyond Divisions: Re-thinking Sexuality, Reproduction and Catholicism in Poland, European Association of Social Anthropologists online conference, 20-24 July 2020, Virtual Lisbon conference.
  • Agnieszka Kościańska, “It will cause an official protest from the Episcopate”: Sexological Self-Censoring between the Communist State and the Catholic Church. Sex, science, and censorship in the 19th and 20th centuries, the University of Granada, Spain, 17-18 February 2020.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, “Profiled cafes, beaches, and various associations”: Polish sexology, queerness, and the Cold War. Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality, Jan 17, 2020.

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, ‘Life without my family, wife, children, and home would not make any sense’: Homo- and Bisexual Men and Their Families”. Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies w San Francisco (23-26.11.2019).

  • Agnieszka Kościańska, “‘Orgasmic Path:’ Sexologists, their patients, and transnational flows of ideas in state socialist Poland,” Sexual Knowledge and Expertise in Europe’s East, before and after 1945. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, June 3-5, 2019  (keynote address).
  • “‘Sexually Hyperactive’: Tracing Intersections of Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity in Polish Rape Discourses.” American Anthropological Association Conference, San Jose, CA. November 14-18, 2018.
  • “Responding to Young People’s Questions: Polish Sex Education in the 1980s.” Social Science History Association Conference, Nov. 8-11, 2018, Phoenix, AZ.
  • “From ‘the ordinary recklessness of girls’ to #MeToo: Tracing changes of legal and discursive practices around sexual violence in Poland”. Gender and Transformation in Europe Workshop, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University, NY, Nov. 2, 2018 (seminar presentation).
  • Socialist Sex Education, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Nov. 6, 2018.
  • Sex and Self-realization: Psychologizing Intimacy in Late State Socialist Poland. Revolution from Within. Experts, Managers and Technocrats in the Long Transformation of 1989, Annual Conference, Imre Kertész Kolleg, Jena, Germany, June 14-15, 2018 (invited presentation).
  • From ‘Can Homosexuality Be Cured?’ to ‘People Who Love Differently Can Be Happy!’: Sexological Approaches towards Homosexuality in State Socialist Poland and their Current Consequences. Impacts of Gender Discourse on Polish Politics, Society & Culture. UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, UK, 11-12, 2018.
  • Queering Sexology: Towards an Anthropological Inquiry into the History of Knowledge Flows. "Staying, Moving, Settling", European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennale Conference, Stockholm University, Sweden, August 14-17, 2018.
  • An adolescent writes to a sex educator. What does the mail counseling center answer? Dealing with teenage sexuality during late state socialism in Poland. European Social Science History Conference, April 4-7, 2018, Belfast, UK.
  • From ‘treatment is possible and effective’ to ‘homosexuality is neither an illness, nor a sexual deviation’: sexology, homosexuality and emancipation during the long 1970s in state socialist Poland, International Colloquium: “Sexology and Ideology in Institutionalisation Era (1960-2000),” Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, March 21-23, 2018 (invited conference presentation).
  • Tracing sources of recent neo-conservatism. Rights, Reproduction and Care: Gender, intimacy and mobility in the context of hardening borders and new populist nationalisms, workshop organized by Frances Pine and Haldis Haukanes, held at the department of Health Promotion and Development, University of Bergen, 8.12.2017 (invited presentation).
  • An anthropological perspective on the history of sex. Workshop How to do the History of Sex. Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, 26.05.2017 (invited presentation).
  • 'Becoming a Homosexual.' Medicine and Sexual Identities during the Long 1970s in State Socialist Poland, University of Glasgow, 19.04.2017.
  • Does 'Gender Ideology' Pose a Threat to the Polish Nation? Tracing Historical Roots of Current Moral Panic in Central Europe. Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, 7.04.2017 (invited lecture).
  • “God himself is the author of marriage”: Tracing the development of moral panic over gender and sexuality in Poland, Goldsmiths, University of London, 29.03.2017 (invited lecture).
  • Humanae Vitae, Birth Control and the Forgotten History of the Catholic Church in Poland. Europe's Spiritual '68: Catholics, Contraception and Comparative Perspectives on Humanae Vitae, King’s College London, 12-13.10.2016 (invited conference presentation).
  • 'Gender Ideology': Tracing the Evolution of Sexuality and Gender Panic in Poland, EASA2016: Anthropological legacies and human futures, University of Milano-Bicocca, July 20-23, 2016
  • Moral Panic over Gender and Sexuality in Poland and CE. The Shrinking of Democracy: An un-Conference at the 25th Anniversary Democracy & Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, The New School for Social Research, July 16-17, 2016.
  • What Happened After 1989: Sex Education and Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health in Poland in the 1980s and 1990s, European Social Science History Conference, Valencia, Spain, 30.03-2.04.2016.
  • Gender on Trial: Tracing changes of legal and discursive practices around sexual violence in Poland. International Gender Studies Centre, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, 28.01.2016 (invited lecture).
  • Forgetting Sexual Violence in Poland. Memory, Discourse, and Diversity: A Research colloquium at the Department of Diversity and Social Conflict, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 20.11.2015 (invited lecture).
  • Anthropology against sexuality and gender based discrimination. Making Anthropology Matter. Seminar of the European Association of Social Anthropologists organised in collaboration with the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Czech Association of Social Anthropologist, October 14-15, 2015, Prague, Vila Lanna.
  • Polish Sex Revolution? Sexuality and Gender in the 1970s and 1980s, Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Universität Wien, 22.01.2015 (invited lecture).
  • Sexology in Transition: Polish Cultural Approaches to Sexuality and Sexual Science; Česká Asociace pro Sociální Antropologii/Czech Association for Social Anthropology, Transition 2.0? Anthropology of the world(s) in reform, Prague, 12-13.09.2014, http://www.casaonline.cz/?page_id=791.
  • EASA and Central European ethnology/anthropology; European Association of Social Anthropologists 13th Biennial Conference, Tallinn, Estonia, 31 Jul-3 Aug 2014 (invited plenary presentation).
  • Academic careers and the politics of employment at Polish universities, European Association of Social Anthropologists 13th Biennial Conference, Tallinn, Estonia, 31 Jul-3 Aug 2014.
  • Feminist and Queer Sex Therapy. The Ethnography of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland; Rethinking Anthropologies in Central Europe for Global Imaginaries, 26-27.05.2014, Prague.
  • Against Medicalization and Commodification. Sexology in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s; the Tenth European Social Science History conference, Vienna, 23-26.04.2014.
  • Beyond Viagra: Sex Therapy in Poland; Challenges of 21st Century: past, present and future of medicine and health care in post-socialist world(s). The 3rd Annual Health in Transition Conference, University of Warsaw, 7-8.06.2013.
  • Women in Religious Communities in Poland. The Catholic Church and the Brahma Kumaris Movement; Women and the Maintenance, Growth and Renewal of Religious Communities. Religionswissenschaftliches Seminar. Sigi Feigel Gastprofessur für Jüdische Studien, Universität Zürich, 6-7.06.2013 (invited lecture).
  • Talking about Rape: Discourse on Sexual Violence in Poland; 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, “Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds”, Manchester, 5-10.08.2013.
  • The Medicalization of Rape. Regulating Female Sexuality through Expert Discourse and Court Practices in Poland from the 1970s to Present; Sexual Cultures Conference: Theory, Practice, Research, Brunel University, London, 20-22.04.2012.
  • Regulating Sexuality and Gender in Poland through Science and Religion; 8th European Feminist Research Conference. The Politics of Location Revisited, Central European University, Budapest, 18-20.05.2012.
  • Informal Education and Uncertified Therapy: Feminist and Queer Sexual Treatment in Poland; New Socialities and Subjectivities in Health Care in the 21st Century, University of Amsterdam, Medical Anthropology at Home Research, Driebergen, the Netherlands, 22-24.06.2012.
  • Women’s Emancipation as an Obstacle to Good Sex. Gender Roles in Sexological Writings in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s; 12th European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference, Nanterre University, Paris, 10-13.07.2012.
  • How Sexuality Develops away from the Market: (Post)socialist Accounts; Thought as Action: Gender, Democracy, Freedom, Center for Women’s and Gender Research, University of Bergen, 16-18.08.2012.
  • Sexology in Poland: Emancipating Sex through Regulation of Gender; Connecting Sexual Ethics and Politics, 2nd International Conference of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics, Ghent University, Gent , 29-31.08.2012.
  • Denying Sexual Violence: Sexology, Gender and Expert Witnesses in Poland, Harvard Social Anthropology Program Seminar Series, 28.03.2011.
  • New Sexual Dysfunctions or New Models of Femininity and Masculinity? Therapeutic Responses to Gender Transformations in Poland; The Society for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association Biennial Meeting, Subjects and Their Milieux in Late Modernity: The Relevance of Psychological Anthropology to Contemporary Problems and Issues, Santa Monica, CA, 31.03-03.04.2011
  • research presentation, Women, Gender & Sexuality in Eastern Europe and Eurasia: A Research Roundtable, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 20.05.2011 (invited presentation).
  • Researching Gender, Researching Europe; Anthropology of Europe: what is it and how should it be practiced? European Association of Social Anthropologists, Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UAM, Poznań, 15-16.10.2009 (with Anika Keinz) .
  • Distrust. Negotiating Women’s Agency within a Fundamentalist Catholic Milieu in Poland, Biennial Conference, European Association of Social Anthropologists: Experiencing Diversity and Mutuality, Ljubljana, 26-30.08.2008.

Organized Panels, Conferences, Summers Schools

  • Co-organizer (with Nicolette Makovicky): Gender Wars: East and South. Final Conference. 25 September – 26 September 2024, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
  • Roundtable: Historizing abortion, understanding the Cold War biopower. Co-organizer with Agata Ignaciuk. Panellists: Corina Doboș, Melissa Feinberg, Emily R. Gioielli, Yuliya Hilevych, Agata Ignaciuk, Agnieszka Kościańska, Eastern Europe's 20th Century Today, Annual Conference of the Imre Kertész Kolleg, 15-17.06.2022.
  • Moderator/discussant: Activism around Sexual and Reproductive Health Counselling across Europe: Forms of Resistance and (De-)medicalisation from Below, European Social Science History Conference, Virtual, 24-27.03.2021
  • Co-organizer (with Agnieszka Pasieka): Critical social sciences in Eastern and Central Europe: No future? roundtable, European Association of Social Anthropologists online conference, 20-24 July 2020, Virtual Lisbon conference.
  • Discussant: Roundtable Negotiating Sexualized Bodies in an Increasingly Divisive and Dangerous World. Organized by Subhadra Channa i Felipe Fernandes (Commission on Global Feminisms and Queer Politics and Commission on Marginalization and Global Apartheid) at the International Union Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences 2019 Inter-Congress “World Solidarities” in Poznań, Poland (27-31.08.2019)
  • Co-organizer (with Catherine Baker, University of Hull, Bogdan Iacob and James Mark, both University of Exeter): Historicizing “Whiteness” in Eastern Europe and Russia, Bucharest, June 25-26, 2019.
     
  • Co-organizer (with Kateřina Lišková, Kate Fisher, Hadley Z. Renkin, Anita Kurimay): Sexual Knowledge and Expertise in Europe’s East, before and after 1945. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, June 3-5, 2019.
  • Co-organizer (with Joanna Mishtal, University of Central Florida). Anti-Immigration, Anti-Gender: Toward an Anthropology of Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Central and Eastern Europe, and Russia. Session at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose, CA. Session was granted cosponsored status by Association for the Anthropology of Policy and Society for the Anthropology of Europe. November 14-18, 2018.
  • Co-organizer (with Hadley Renkin, CEU): Cruising the frontiers of time and space: towards an anthropology of queer crossings. European Network of Queer Anthropology roundtable at the European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennale Conference, “Staying, Moving, Settling”, Stockholm University, Sweden, August 14-17, 2018.
  • Co-organizer (with Agnieszka Pasieka): panel Gender, far-right, and political radicalization, EASA2016: Anthropological legacies and human futures, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20-23.07.2016
  • Co-organizer (with Anita Kurimay, Bryn Mawr College, Kateřina Lišková, Masaryk University, Hadley Z. Renkin, CEU, Eszter Timár, CUE): Sex and Sexuality in East-Central Europe, Past and Present. An Interdisciplinary Conference at the Central European University, Budapest, October 16-17, 2015.
  • Organizer: Summer school. Rethinking Anthropological Engagement in Central-Eastern Europe, Warsaw, June 3-6, 2010. Partners: Slovak Association of Social Anthropologists, Central European University, Charles University Prague (supported by the International Visegrad Fund).
  • Co-organizer: Summer school. Teaching and Studying Social Anthropology in Central Europe, Modra near Bratislava, Slovakia, September 16-20, 2009. Partners: Slovak Association of Social Anthropologists, Central European University, Charles University Prague (supported by the International Visegrad Fund).
  • Co-organizer (together with Monika Baer, Uniwersytet Wrocławski): Antropologia płci i seksualności. Perspektywy marginalne (Anthropology of gender and sexuality. Marginal perspectives). Wokrshop at I Kongres Antropologiczny, Warszawa, Polski Instytut Antropologii (Polish Anthropological Congress), October 23-25, 2013 (invited session).
  • Co-organizer (together with Hadley Renkin, Central European University): The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: naturalizing and modernizing Europe’s east, past and present. Workshop at the European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference, Nanterre University, Paris, July 10-13, 2012.
  • Co-organizer (with Jill Owczarzak, University of Kentucky). Westernising gender regimes? Discourses and practices in Eastern Europe. Workshop at the European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference, Bristol, UK, September 18-21, 2006.

 

Awards and Scholarships

  • Erasmus Plus, visiting lecturer: Universidad de Granada, 3-7.02.2025.
  • 2024. The University of Warsaw's Rector's Award for Research Excellence.
  • Research and networking visits: University of Oxford,  Global Experiences of Gender in an Age of Care Crises and Transformations (Social Sciences Division Interdisciplinary Hub, John Fell Oxford University Press Research Fund), 16-20.09.2024, 18-23.11.2024.
  • Erasmus Plus, visiting lecturer: Universidad de Granada, 5-9.02.2024.
  • 2023 Award Nomonation - The Beata Pawlak Memorial Award by the Batory Foundation - for the book Odejdź
  • 2023 Award Nomonation - The Marcin Król Award by the Batory Foundation - for the book Odejdź
  • Leverhulme Visiting Professorship, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, January 2021-June 2022
  • The Clio Award by the Rector of the University of Warsaw (2018) for the book Zobaczyć łosia.
  • Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena fellowship at the Friedrich Schiller University, October 2017-March 2018, project: Tracing the Evolution of Sexuality and Gender Panic in Central Europe: The Case of Poland.
  • European Visiting Research Fellowship by the Caledonian Research Foundation and the Royal Society of Edinburgh; School of Design, University of Edinburgh, April-August  2017, project: History of European Non-normative Sexuality in the 1970s: Polish Sexology in Comparative Perspective. 
  • Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena fellowship at the Friedrich Schiller University, August-September 2016, project: The History of Sexuality in Socialist and Post-Socialist Poland.
  • Erasmus Plus, visiting lecturer: Saxo Institute, Department of European Ethnology, University of Copenhagen (25-28.03.2019); Denmark Goldsmiths, University of London, 28-31.03.2017; University of Oxford, School of InterdisciplinaryArea Studies; Russian and East European Studies, 30.01.2020-07.02.2020, 25-30.01.2016; Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, 19-22.01.2015.
  • 2015. The Clio Award by the Rector of the University of Warsaw for the book Płeć, przyjemność i przemoc.
  • 2010. Fulbright Senior Award (declined).
  • 2010. The Clio Award by the Rector of the University of Warsaw for the book Potega Ciszy.
  • October 2009–September 2010. Award for teaching and research activity from the University of Warsaw, the Modern University Programme (co-funded by Human Capital Programme, EU Funds).
  • Awards from Erasmus Programme (by the European Union) – Teaching Staff Mobility, visiting lecturer: at Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Chair of Comparative Central European Studies (May 2010); Saxo Institute, Department of European Ethnology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (March 2009, March 2013) .
  • September 2006–December 2006. The Kosciuszko Foundation fellowship, host institution The New School for Social Research, New York.
  • April 2005–June 2005. Danish Governmental Scholarship, host institution Saxo Institute. Department of European Ethnology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institute, Krakow 11-29 July 2004. Organized by Transregional Centre of Democratic Studies, New School for Social Research, New York (stipend from the Network of East-West Women and the TCDS).
  • 2000. Award of the Ecumenical Foundation of Tolerance for the MA thesis.

Member of scientific organizations

1. European Association of Social Anthropologists.
2. Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze (Polish Ethnological Society).
3. Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Association.