Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UAM Poznań

home page | site map

Polish

About Us

Home page

The Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology is a leading centre for both teaching and conducting field reasearch in Poland.

The history of the Department goes back to 1919, when after the First World War, the University was established in the city of Poznań. An original part of the Poznań University, ours is the oldest Department of Ethnology in Poland. Since the Department’s beginnings, scholars have specialised in Ethnology, consisting of ethno-history, regional studies and folklore studies. The Department of Ethnology was renamed the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology in 1992. This change of name reflected the broadening of research fields.

Education

We maintain a strong tradition of broad-based undergraduate and graduate education.

In the Undergraduate Degree Programme we offer the core coursework in Cultural Anthropology, with a wide range of research-led optional courses and the opportunity to write a field-based thesis. At the graduate level, we offer a Master's Degree Programme and a Postgraduate Research Programme leading to the Ph.D. The Department has also the right to award postdoctoral degree in Ethnology (i.e. habilitation – a qualification as a university professor).

Adam Mickiewicz University follows the Bologna system of education. International exchange and Erasmus students, as well as guest students, can choose from the wide range of course units taught in English and occasionally in other languages. Additionally, courses in Polish language are available for the duration of either one or two semesters. Courses in European Societies & Cultures are also offered by the university [ http://amu.edu.pl/en/year-at-amu/a-year-at-amu/amu-pie].

Our Department itself offers a number of English-language courses, like: Anthropology of space: locating people in places; Art and Psychoanalysis; Art and World Communism; Disentangling memory: how past is being socially produced in the present; European Orientalism; Migration and Health; Nationalism in Central Europe; Society and Culture in Communist Poland. Every year the Department expands its English-language course list. For the academic year 2012-2013 we plan to offer a complete MA degree in Anthropology.

Research

Our 25 Department members and 20 doctoral students have conducted research in various geographical areas across the world, including: Latin America (Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico), Africa (Morocco, Sudan, Cameroon, Mali, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania), Asia (India, Tibet, Myanmar, Japan, Buryatia in Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan) and Europe (Ukraine, Germany, Alsace, the Basque Country, Catalonia, France, Switzerland and the Balkans). In Poland, our scholars focus on the region of the Great Poland and the city of Poznań, as well as the region of Pomerania (especially Żuławy).

Fields and subjects of current research in the Institute include:

• traditional and contemporary folk culture, changes of tradition, cultural heritage
• popular culture, media, gender studies, studies of globalisation
• identity, ethnicity, national, ethnic and religious minorities
• migration – see activities of The Center for Migration Studies [http://www.cebam.amu.edu.pl/en/]
• political anthropology, political and economic transformations of post-socialist societies
• medical anthropology
• anthropology of religion
• visual anthropology
• history, methodology, and theory of anthropology

In more detail our researchers are occupied with the topics such as:

• alter-globalization social movements in East and Central Europe
• trauma and collective memory in the former Nazi concentration camp in Stutthof, genocide and its aftermath in Rwanda.
• diasporic identity of second-generation Tibetan refugees in India
• new indigenous movements in Latin America
• perspectivism and the meaning of personhood and the body among E’ñepá Indians in Venezuela

This wide range of research interests is reflected in publications. Our Department members and doctoral students publishe in a number of languages, including English (e.g. in Anthropological Quarterly, Critique of Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, The Anthropology of East Europe Review) but also German (e.g. Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte), French (e.g. Ethnologie française, Africana Bulletin), Spanish (e.g. Estudios Latinoamericanos), Russian (e.g. Ewropa), Czech (e.g. Czech Sociological Review, Sociologicky casopis),Hungarian (e.g. Buksz, Eszmelet) and of course Polish. In 2010, we published 10 books (both monographs and edited volumes) and 116 scholarly articles and book chapters.

Cooperation

In Poland, the Department established a long-term cooperation with:

• other Departments of Anthropology
• associations, foundations, journal editorial offices
• ethnographic and open-air museums

Abroad, the Department maintains close ties with the following research centres and organisations:

• European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder
• Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle/Salle
• Vienna University
• Central European University, Budapest
• Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca
• Georgetown University, Washington DC
• Universidad de Chile, Santiago
• Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP), Peru

Our students participate in international student exchange with the following universities:

• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
• Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin
• Masarykova Univerzita (Masaryk University), Brno
• University of Jyväskylä (Jyväskylän yliopisto), Jyväskylä
• Univerza v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana), Lublana
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Monachium
• Universidad del Pais Vasco (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea), San Sebastian / Bilbao
• Istanbul Bilgi University (Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi), Stambuł
• Universität Wien, Wiedeń

We constantly develop international co-operation with foreign academic centres and scholars. On October 15-16, 2009, we hosted the European Association of Social Anthropologists’ conference, “The Anthropology of Europe”, that attracted over 50 scholars from both Eastern and Western Europe, as well as the Unites States, including Ulf Hannerz, Chris Hann and Kirsten Hastrup [http://etnologia.amu.edu.pl/go.live.php/PL-H449/program-i-abstrakty-konferencji-anthropology-of-europe.html]. The Department’s director, prof. Michał Buchowski, the president of EASA between 2009 and 2010, is currently vice-chair of World Council of Anthropological Associations, and has been the head of the Polish Ethnological Society (PTL), the biggest professional organization of anthropologist in Poland, founded in 1895.

Structure

The Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań consists of the following sections:

1. Section of Polish Ethnology
2. Section of European Studies and Cultural Criticism
3. Section of Contemporary Cultural Studies
4. Section of Non-European Studies
5. Laboratory of Visual Anthropology

1. SECTION OF POLISH ETHNOLOGY

Head: Prof. Andrzej Brencz
Members: Dr. Anna Weronika Brzezińska
Dr. Agnieszka Chwieduk
Dr. Katarzyna Marciniak
Dr. Kacper Pobłocki
Prof. Emerita Anna Szyfer

The Section of Polish Ethnology focuses on contemporary issues in folk culture, with a particular interest given to the phenomenon of regionalism, as well as identity formation processes. Research concerned with local, regional and ethnic identity has been conducted in chosen regions of Poland (e.g.. in Great Poland and Western parts of country), as well as in the borderland regions of Poland, as well as Western and Eastern Europe (e.g. in the Polish-Czech, Polish-German and French-German borderlands).

As far as the research on folk culture and the construction of contemporary forms of regional identity are concerned, two phenomena implying continuity of cultural heritage and the undergoing changes are of particular interest to the section team, namely: traditionalism and modernization. Accordingly, the areas of staff’s research interests can be divided into two main groups:

a) research on traditional culture with a particular stress being put on the village culture, the issues of contemporary folk religiosity (including places of worship and pilgrimages), and folk art;

b) research on modern culture encompassing: the issues of contemporary cultural heritage management and the related strategies such as regional education and cultural animation.

Undergraduate Program offers an experience of fieldwork research based in Poland.

2. SECTION OF EUROPEAN STUDIES AND CULTURAL CRITICISM

Head: Prof. Michał Buchowski
Members: Dr. Jacek Bednarski
Dr. Wojciech Dohnal
Dr. Piotr Fabiś
Dr. Izabella Main
Dr. Jacek Schmidt
Dr. Anna Witeska-Młynarczyk

The cultural criticism studies focus on historical processes that unveil political aspects of human culture. A wide spectrum of issues that fit into the stream of cultural criticism studies can be divided into a number of sub-disciplines such as: political anthropology; ethnic studies; urban anthropology, and others. More specifically, the section members are occupied with the following subjects:

a) socio-cultural transformations of the post-socialist era in Central and Eastern Europe;

b) ethnicity in Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first century (e.g. ethnic revitalism; ethnic minorities and their formal-legal position; migration; transnationalism);

c) power, inequality, and domination; Political Anthropology and the politics of anthropology;
d) Urban Anthropology and the politics of memory;
e) West as a founding myth and the theory of capitalist society.

3. SECTION OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES

Head: Dr. Grzegorz Pełczyński
Members: Dr. Waldemar Kuligowski
Dr. Danuta Penkala-Gawęcka
Dr. Adam Pomieciński
Dr. Agata Stanisz

Members of the section are concerned with a broad spectrum of issues belonging to the contemporary cultural studies on the whole, like the clash of global and the local, or popular culture studies (including music, film, advertising, media, literature). The other subjects of exploration embrace: alternative medicine, socio-cultural transformation in the post-Soviet countries in Central Asia, anthropology of kinship, family and marriage (in the traditional as well as contemporary cultural context), anthropology of religion (particularly focused on religiosity among ethnic minorities), and totalitarian systems. The research has been conducted in various geographical areas (e.g. Poland, Albania, Kazakhstan).

4. SECTION OF NON-EUROPEAN STUDIES

Head: Dr. Ryszard Vorbrich
Members: Dr. Natalia Bloch
Dr. Tarzycjusz Buliński
Dr. Przemysław Hinca
Prof. Emeritus: Zbigniew Jasiewicz
Dr. Mariusz Kairski
Prof. Aleksander Posern-Zieliński

The beginnings of the research work in non-European countries by the section staff date back to the eighties of the twentieth century. The opening up of new financing opportunities in the nineties has strengthened the position of the section in terms of broadening the area of research to almost all continents, as well as allowing for the fostering of international cooperation. So far, members of the Institute (including Ph.D. candidates and students) have carried out their fieldwork in the following parts of the world: Africa (Morocco, Sudan, Cameroon, Mali, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania), Latin America (Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico), Asia (Central Asia, India, Myanmar, Japan) and Oceania.

Within the range of research interests of the section one can find: a theory and pragmatics of cultural change, the theory of primitive societies, ethnic studies (e.g. issues of ethnodevelopment, ethnic destruction, multiculturalism, interculturalism, migration, globalization), ethnohistory, political and economic anthropology, anthropology of development, anthropology of childhood and education. Additionally, the section is occupied with the history and the methodology of ethnology.

It is worth mentioning that in recent years the researchers have been engaged in a few research and development projects aimed at social and economic activation among local communities under investigation. For example Water and Reforestation Project for Sahel (Cameroon 2001-2007) or the project implemented in cooperation with the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest - AIDESEP (Peru 2002-2007).

5. LABORATORY OF VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The Department also hosts the Centre for Migration Studies, an interdisciplinary research centre established at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in 2009. The Centre focuses on researching migration and migrant’s integration processes in Western regions of Poland. We conduct projects financed by European Union and cooperate with other academic institutions concerned with migration studies, e.g. the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University,Washington DC. For the Centre’s activities see: http://cebam.amu.edu.pl/en/.

Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, ul. Św. Marcin 78, 61-809 Poznań Poland, phone +48 61 829 4817, fax +48 61 829 4710, etnolo@amu.edu.pl

[CMS] by cdweb.pl