BACKGROUND
I obtained a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Warwick (2019), and an MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation from St Cross College, University of Oxford (2021). Throughout my studies at Warwick and Oxford, I wrote on English, Polish, German, and French modernist literature and theatre.
RESEARCH
In my doctoral thesis, I investigate how mid-twentieth century émigré authors pushed against the existing linguistic and formal limits of Polish literature, focusing on the writings of Stefan Themerson and Maria Kuncewicz. The writers’ shared experience of emigration attuned them to the question of cultural alterity, leading them to write in English and French, and to self-translate. By analysing how the works of each writer engage with the notion of national culture, I argue that their literary practices reflect a search for a new language for Polish literature – both literally and aesthetically – which simultaneously takes into account and transcends its constructed boundaries. Establishing transnational genealogies of artistic belonging, their writings introduce a new perspective on the relationship between language and national culture.
My doctoral research has been generously supported by the Rawnsley Graduate Studentship at St Hugh's College (2021-2024).
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Studentship, in 2024-2025 I will be based at the University of Wrocław and the Ossolineum Library where I will be working on an archival project which will form the public-facing outcome of my doctoral research.
TEACHING AND MENTORING
At Oxford, I have taught Polish Literature at undergraduate level (Polish Paper VIII), and acted as the Graduate Teaching Assistant on the MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation, where I co-taught comparative literary and translation studies theory.
I have been involved in various outreach programmes, such as Project Access, IntoUniversity, Oxplore, and Opportunity Oxford, delivering sessions encouraging students to study Modern Foreign Languages.
In 2023-2024, I worked as the Graduate Ambassador for the Faculty's new VOx Programme.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
I have recently curated an exhibition at the Taylor Institution Library, showcasing publications of the Gaberbocchus Press (on display between 21 October - 12 November 2024). Read more here.
I have worked as a Research Assistant on a Policy Engagement project led by Dr Charlotte Ryland, aimed at establishing structures for Policy Engagement within the Faculty. Read more here.
INVITED TALKS
Workshop on the practicalities of archival research in Poland at BASEES Postgraduate Workshop: Using Archives and Libraries to Research Histories of Eastern Europe and Eurasia (online), 6 July 2023. Event slides.
“Stefan Themerson and Maria Kuncewicz in Search of a New Language”. Spotlight on… Polish, inaugural postgraduate research seminar at University College London, School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (London, UK), 7 March 2023. Listen to it here.
PUBLICATIONS
Articles
"Poland 101: Maria Kuncewicz and Czesław Miłosz in America". Forthcoming with The Polish Review.
Working papers
“Conrad’s Compatriot: Maria Kuncewicz and the Search for Transnationality”
“Anthropology of Otherness, Anthropology of Polishness: Race, Class, and the Absurd in Witkiewicz’s plays”.
Reviews
Comparative review of Migration, Modernity, and Transnationalism in the Work of Joseph Conrad, edited by Tania Zulli and Kim Salmons, Bloomsbury, 2021, and Ludmilla Voitkovska’s Exile as Continuum in Joseph Conrad’s Fiction. Living in Translation, Routledge, 2022. OCCT Review, Oxford, 30 November 2023.
Review of Romantic Legacies: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Contexts, edited by Shun-Liang Chao and John Michael Corrigan, Routledge, 2019. OCCT Review, Oxford. 31 May 2022.
Blog posts
“Polish Studies in Translation. Interview with Dr Kasia Szymańska”. Polish Studies Interdisciplinary (Pol-Int) Blog. 28 September 2023.
“Critical Polish Studies through the Critical-Thinking Communities Scheme”. TORCH Blog, 27 September 2023.
“Polish Studies Working Group – get to know us!”. Polish Studies Interdisciplinary (Pol-Int) Blog. 7 September 2023
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Between 2021-2023, I was the co-convenor of the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre Discussion Group, where I continue to serve as one of the co-convenors of the Translation, Criticism, and Creativity research strand. At OCCT, I have organised roundtable discussions, book launches, and meetings with translators of Eastern European literature, and beyond.
In 2022, I co-founded and continue to co-convene the TORCH/BASEES Polish Studies Working Group, supported by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities Critical-Thinking Communities scheme. You can read more about it on the Pol-Int Blog and the TORCH Blog. As part of our activities, in 2023-24 I ran a monthly postgraduate workshop for Polish Studies scholars aimed at establishing an international and interdisciplinary research network.
For my efforts aimed at promoting the study of Polish culture abroad, I have been awarded a prize by the Institute for the Development of the Polish Language at the Polish Ministry of Education.
SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS
“Motherhood and Migration in Maria Kuncewicz’s Tristan”. Borders, Margins, Cartographies: Transnational Modernist Women’s Writings (Tartu, Estonia), 4-5 October 2024. Funded by the Ilchester Fund Travel Grant.
"Stefan Themerson’s and Maria Kuncewicz’s Search for Alternative Communities. The Case of the Gaberbocchus Press and the PEN Club Centre for Writers in Exile". East and Central European Cultures in Exile. Archiving, Collecting, and Publishing (Marburg, Germany), 28-30 August 2024. Funded by the Hedrer Institut.
“The Parallel Lives of Two Polish Lecturers: Czesław Miłosz and Maria Kuncewicz in America”. BASEES Polish Studies Group Northern Workshop (Manchester, UK), 20-21 June 2024. Funded by the BASEES Polish Studies Group Travel Grant.
“Anthropology of Otherness, Anthropology of Polishness. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz in the Tropics”. The 2024 British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Annual Conference (Cambridge, UK), 5-7 April 2024. Awarded the BASEES Women's Forum Postgraduate Paper Prize 2024.
“Alice in Wondercamp. Maria Kuncewicz’s American Adventures”. Crossing the Slavic Atlantic. An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Ibero-Slavic Encounters (Exeter), 3 February 2024. Funded by the St Hugh's College Travel Grant.
“Pushing Against the Limits of National Form. A Study of Józef Czapski’s Lost Time. Lectures in Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp. The 5th Annual Conference Polish Studies: Today and Tomorrow (online), 7-8 September 2023.
“Prismatic Emigration in Stefan Themerson and Maria Kuncewicz”. The 2023 British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Annual Conference (Glasgow, UK), 31 March – 2 April 2023. Enabled by BASEES Graduate Support.
“Between ‘the Polish’ and ‘the universal’: Stefan Themerson’s and Maria Kuncewicz’s New Language for Polish Literature”. The Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (Chicago, USA), 16-19 March 2023. Funded by the Barbinder Watson Fund Travel Grant at St Hugh's College.
“Tristan in New York: Maria Kuncewicz and the Language of Myth”. Slavonic Research Seminar (Oxford, UK), 26 January 2023.
“Playing Chopin Backwards: Stefan Themerson’s General Piesc as an Unholy Émigré”. The 4th Annual Conference Polish Studies: Today and Tomorrow (online), 8-9 September 2022.
“Anthropology of Otherness, Anthropology of Polishness: Witkiewicz, Malinowski, and Conrad in the Tropics”. The XXIII Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association (Tbilisi, Georgia), 24-29 July 2022. Funded by the Ilchester Fund Travel Grant.