Poland research hub launched at Oxford University

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A new hub has opened at the University of Oxford to support research cooperation with Poland, offering grants for academic projects, visits, training and workshops.

The Oxford Poland Hub, which its organisers describe as Poland’s first initiative of its kind anywhere in the world, will also organise public events exploring Polish history, language and culture.

“The launch of the Oxford-Poland Hub is an exciting new chapter in Oxford’s longstanding relationship with Poland,” said the University of Oxford’s vice-chancellor, Irene Tracey. “[It] will create new opportunities for academic exchange, collaborative research and partnership between Oxford and Poland.”

The centre is initially funded for three years by Poland’s National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), with support from the science and higher education ministry. It will operate within The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

“The Oxford Poland Hub…gives us a permanent institutional presence at one of the world’s leading academic centres,” said Wojciech Karczewski, NAWA’s director general.

“We see it as an investment in long-term partnerships that will enable researchers from Poland and Oxford to tackle increasingly ambitious research challenges together.”

The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of the most prestigious. It ranked first globally in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

The new centre will offer grants of up to £5,000 (26,400 zloty) to support research projects or academic visits and up to £10,000 for academic workshops. Training scholarships are due to be introduced from the hub’s second year.

All researchers affiliated with the University of Oxford will be eligible to apply for funding if their work involves collaboration with researchers based in Poland. The hub will focus on humanities and social sciences as well as cooperation with Oxford’s libraries and museums.

The hub will also organise public lectures, exhibitions and events related to Polish history, language and culture for the academic community and Oxford’s residents, including its Polish community.

The hub was inaugurated on Monday at Jesus College, one of Oxford University’s colleges, with Poland’s science and higher education minister, Marcin Kulasek, and Rafał Wiśniewski, chargé d’affaires at the Polish Embassy in London, among those attending.

“Poland and the United Kingdom have for many years developed strong cooperation in science and higher education through joint research projects, academic mobility programmes and institutional partnerships,” Kulasek said. “The Oxford–Poland Hub opens a new chapter in this cooperation.”

The centre is directed by Paulina Kewes, a professor of English literature at Oxford who was born in Poland. Professor Norman Davies, the renowned historian of Poland and an honorary fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, attended the launch.

The inaugural lecture, given by Dariusz Wójcik, a professor at the National University of Singapore and honorary research associate at the University of Oxford, discussed Maria Czaplicka, the renowned Polish academic who in 1916 became Oxford’s first female lecturer of anthropology.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Nils Lindner/Unsplash

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator, lecturer, and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.