dr Jan Lorenz

dr Jan Lorenz

Assistant Professor, Section of Social Anthropology

Room: 2.29/2.46
Phone: 61 829 13 81
E-mail: jan.lorenz@amu.edu.pl

Office hours:

Monday, 11:00-12:00
please contact beforehand

 

Research interests

My ethnographic research, writing and creative work encompass a wide spectrum of topics, but boil down to fundamental questions about human (and non-human) condition within and beyond its specific instantiations.   Since 2018 my work has been focused on two interrelated research areas. The first comprises folklore and religion in contemporary Japan, with particular focus on the ontology of religious representations and ritual objects. The second involves research on robots, automatons and mechanical dolls as sociocultural phenomena.   Much of my work in the last decade, looked at from that perspective, explored transitions between states of being, subjectivities and the boundaries of otherness. I have written about self-formation in communal and personal projects of religious conversion and ethnoreligious “revival” and explored how people adopt and adapt to ethical and legal obligations in attempts to transform themselves. A substantial part of my postdoctoral ethnographic research focused on people embracing or converting to Judaism. That in turn involved engaging with the religious context in a wider perspective, primarily that of Catholicism and Evangelical Christian denominations that many of the converts grew up in or belonged to.   Another field of my inquiry and output, close to my methodological commitment to multi-modal anthropology, is the interrelated topics of sensory perception, materiality and corporeality. In that respect I have done research on experimental media art, and engaged with these dimensions of existence and experience in my ethnographic films and audio-visual projects.   I am a member of the Commission on Visual Anthropology of the IUAES.   I am particularly, but not exclusively, interested in supervising theses on the following topics:  
  • religion
  • ethics
  • subjectivity and self-formation
  • science, technology and society (artificial intelligence, robots and automatons),
  • senses and materiality
  • belonging and relatedness
  • visual anthropology
  • art

Publications

Publications

Lorenz, J. (2025). Metafizyczna obecność i pustka mechanicznego ciała. Android Kannon w świątyni rinzai zen. The Religious Studies Review, 295 (1), 77-96.

Lorenz, J. (2023). Kenkyū happyō. Kyūdai Tamaya Shōbei Kōenkai no Kaihō, 17, 2-3.

Lorenz, J. (2021). Tactics of Transformation: Self-formation and the Multiplicity of Authority in Polish Conversions to Judaism. In: M. Clarke, E. Morgan (eds.) Rules and Ethics: Global perspectives from anthropology and history (pp. 169-189). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Lorenz, J. (2021). „The sound exists only in your own body”. Sensory approximation of visual and aural impairment in media art projects. Visual Anthropology, 34 (1), 35-53.

Lorenz, J. (2021). Being and Becoming. Polish Conversions to Judaism and the Dynamics of Affiliation. In: F. Guesnet, A. Polonsky, A. Rapoport-Albert & M. Wodziński (eds.) Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Vol. 33: Jewish Religious Life in Poland since 1750 (pp. 425-437), Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Lorenz, J. (2018). Belief. In: J. Jackson (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199766567-0190

Lorenz, J. (2016). Polish newcomers to Jewishness: A reflection in the wake of the revival. In: N. Fisher, T. Parfitt (eds.) Becoming Jewish: New Jews and Emerging Jewish Communities in a Globalized World (pp. 167-184). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Lorenz, J. (2016). Shades of closeness. Ontologies of belonging and becoming in a contemporary Jewish Community in Poland. In: M. Diemling, L. Ray (eds.) Boundaries, Identity and Belonging in Modern Judaism (pp. 63–75). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Lorenz, J. (2015). Counting as one. Moral encounters and criteria of affinity in Polish Jewish congregation. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2), 51-81.

Lorenz J. (2011). Życie w miejscu śmierci. Muzeum/Obóz Stutthof w świetle doświadczenia I percepcji jego współczesnych mieszkańców. In Sztutowo czy Stutthof. In: Ł. Banaszek, M. Wosińska (eds.) Oswajanie krajobrazu kulturowego (pp. 173–187). Sztutowo: Muzeum Stutthof w Sztutowie.

Lorenz, J. (2007). Blizny od gwoździ. Haitański zombie jako idiom kulturowy i metafora traumy. Kultura i Społeczeństwo 51(4), 101–117.

 

Ethnographic films

Lorenz, J. (2023). Typhoon season. Adam Mickiewicz University.

Goldstein, P. & Lorenz, J. (2019). Active (citizen). Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien.

  • Award: Best Short Documentary, Capital Filmmakers Festival Berlin 2021
  • Award: Best Environmental Film, Jahorina Film Festival 2021
  • Award: Special Prize, Green Montenegro International Film Festival 2021

Lorenz, J. (2014). Passage. Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester.

Lorenz, J. (2009). Star. Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester.

 

Audiovisual instalations

Goldstein P., Lorenz J. (2022). Active (citizen) – Can anyone be an activist? Multiscreen installation. Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien.

Permanent exhibition: Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien, Berlin.

Temporary exhibition: STS Hub 2025 Berlin “Diffracting the Critical through Multimodal Submersions” (11-14.03.2025)

Research projects

2022 Robots and automatons in Buddhist and Shintoist religious practice in contemporary Japan, research project, Adam Mickiewicz University. 1.09.2022 – 31.03.2023

2017, A co-investigator in the “Visualising the Invisible: Using visual ethnography to explore extra-institutional activism of migrants and ethnic minorities” visual anthropology project funded by British Academy/Leverhulme (with Dr Piotr Goldstein (PI), University of Manchester)

2014, Becoming Oneself, Becoming Another: Conversion to Judaism in contemporary Poland. Postdoctoral Fellowship, Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester

2013, Informal Jewish education in Poland and creative practice with visual media, Centre for East European Language–Based Area Studies Research Internship (participatory video project and film workshop)

2008, “Relentless dybbuk. The loss, the memory and the revival of Jewish life in post-socialist Poland” Doctoral Fellowship