Tomasz Rakowski (PhD, habilitated) is Associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, and Lecturer at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. He is also a medical doctor, specialist in Accident & Emergency medicine.
anthropology & social art, phenomenological anthropology, pre-textual ethnography, studies on poverty and social trauma, bottom-up development in Poland and Mongolia.
Tomasz Rakowski, PhD (habilitated), is an ethnologist and cultural anthropologist, Associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, a Lecturer at the Institute of Polish Culture, and a Fellow of Polish Council for Scientific Excellence; he is also a medical doctor, specialist in Accident & Emergency medicine. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Poland and Mongolia. The author of two ethnographic monographs, multiple edited volumes, and peer-reviewed articles. Recently he published Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness: An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland, Berghahn Books, 2016, and Przepływy, współdziałania, kręgi możliwego. Antropologia powodzenia [Flows, Cooperations, and the Circles of Possibilities. Anthropology of Fortune-Prosperity], słowo/obraz terytoria, 2019. He is also the editor, with Helena Patzer, of Pretextual Ethnographies: Challenging the Phenomenological Level of Anthropological Knowledge-Making, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2018. He is especially interested in postsocialist transformation and vernacular forms of socio-economic development, and he works also on experimental methodologies in ethnography.
Tomasz conducts fieldwork in Poland and Mongolia. Recently he has completed two Polish National Science Centre’s grants: 1. “Local Dimensions of Development. A Research on New Forms of Bottom-Up Development and Self-Organization among the Torghuts from Bulgan sum in Western Mongolia” 2. “The Challenges of Creative Ethnography – Working Out of the <<Action Research>> Methodology Able to Perceive Peripheral Creative Activities that Combines Perspectives of Dense Anthropological Research, Community Arts, and Contemporary Art Projects”
Awards:
Nomination for Jan Długosz Prize, 2020
Nomination for Jerzy Giedroyc Award (Award of Marie-Curie University of Lublin), 2019
for the book Przepływy, współdziałania, kręgi możliwego. Antropologia powodzenia [Flows, Cooperations, and the Circles of Possibilities. Anthropology of Fortune-Prosperity], 2019.
Rector’s Award for Outstanding Scholars, University of Warsaw, 2019.
Józef Tischner Award (Award of Znak Publishing House), 2010
Jerzy Giedroyc Award (Award of Marie-Curie University of Lublin), 2010
Award of the Poznań Review of Books, 2010
Nomination for Jan Długosz Prize, 2010
Clio Prize, University of Warsaw, 2010
for the book Hunters, Gatherers, and Practicioners of Powerlessness. An Ethnography of the Degraded [in Postsocialist Poland], 2009.
Fellowships:
Józef Tischner Senior Visiting Fellowship, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen/ Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, October - December 2020.
Visiting Fellowship, Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jenia, October 2019 - January 2020.