The Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology is a leading center of ethnographic and anthropological teaching and research in Poland. We currently have 22 permanent teaching staff, about 20 doctoral students, more than 100 postgraduate students and about 200 undergraduate students.

The history of the Institute goes back to 1919 when after the First World War the Poznań University was established in Poznań. Since the Institute’s beginnings, the scholars specialized in ethnology, consisting of ethno-history, regional studies and folklore studies. The term ethnology is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who studied the linguistic and cultural diversity of the Kingdom of Hungary in the late 18th century.
The Institute of Ethnology was renamed the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology in 1989 (?).

The Institute consists of four research units:

• Ethnology of Poland
• European Studies and Cultural Critique
• Studies of Contemporary Culture
• Non-European Studies

Research in the Institute is broad based, including contemporary culture in anthropological perspective, cultures and societies of Europe and outside Europe, traditional and contemporary folk culture, transformation of values and styles of living, cultural ecology, globalization and modernization processes, studies of cultural heritage, methodology and history of ethnology.