Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Dr Anna Wylegała

Fellow Anna Wylegała

April 2013 - August 2013
Mail annawylegala(at)gmail(dot)com

Anna Wylegała was a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena from April to August 2013. She is assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Prior to her appointment as assistant professor in 2013, she was a PhD student at the Graduate School for Social Research (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw). Her PhD thesis was a comparative study of social memory in places of mass displacement in Poland and Ukraine. In 2009 she was the Petro Jacyk Visiting Fellow at Toronto University. She worked for the Oral History programme of the KARTA Center in Warsaw from 2006 to 2012 and continues to cooperate closely with the Center.

Research project at the Kolleg

During her stay in Jena, Anna Wylegała will work on her post-doctoral project entitled “The social anthropology of filling the void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II”. The project introduces the concept of “social emptiness”, a phenomenon that arose in Central and Eastern Europe during and immediately after the war as a result of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, Soviet “economic reforms”, displacement, and population transfers. Focusing on the subjective sphere of social practices and relationships, the project aims to investigate processes of replacing the missing elements in local communities: class/social groups (expropriated and deported gentry and landowners), ethnic groups (murdered or deported Jews, Poles, Ukrainians), and professional groups (e.g. shoemakers or pharmacists). Thus the analysis will focus on property changes, economic dysfunctions, changes in social and cultural practices, and changes in neighbourhood and personal relationships. Based first and foremost on various types of ego documents (including oral testimonies) and archival sources, the project will compare attempts to fill the void in several local communities (villages and small towns) in Poland and Ukraine.

Main areas of research

  • Social and biographical memory,
  • Narrative analysis,
  • Holocaust studies,
  • Displacement and migration in postwar Eastern Europe in comparative social perspective

Positions and Memberships

  • Assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw (since 2013)
  • Documentarian for the Oral History programme of the KARTA Center in Warsaw (2006-2012)
  • Member of the Polish Oral History Association since 2009

Articles

Społeczna pamięć przesiedlenia: studium porównawcze na przykładzie dwóch powojennych społeczności lokalnych Polski i Ukrainy [Social Memory of the Resettlements: Comparative Study of the Polish and Ukrainian Postwar Local Communities], in: Studia Socjologiczne, No. 2, Warszawa 2013.

(Nie)pamięć na gruzach. Zagłada Żydów żółkiewskich w świadomości nowych mieszkańców miasta [Memory on the ruins. The Shoah of the News of Zhovkva in the Memory of the contemporary Inhabitants of the Town], in: Zagłada Żydów. Studia i materiały, No. 7, Warszawa 2011.

Together with Piotr Filipkowski: Kreuz Ostbahn / Krzyż Wielkopolski. Kreuzung Deutscher und Polnischer Erinnerung in: BIOS. Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen, No. 1 (22. Jahrgang), 2009.

Minority Language as Identity Factor: Case Study of the Young Russian-Speakers in Lviv, in: International Journal of Sociology of Language, ed. J. Fishman, V. Kulyk , Special Issue No. 201, 2010.

Together with  Abel Polese: Odessa and Lvov or Odesa and Lviv: How Important is a Letter? Reflections on the „Other” in Two Ukrainian Cities, in: Nationalities Papers, Vol. 36, Issue 5, 2008.

You can find more information and a complete list of publications on Anna Wylegała's academia.edu profil.