Olga Grochowska

I hold an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature and Geography from the University of St Andrews (2018) and an MPhil in European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures from the University of Cambridge (2019).

My current research interests lie at the intersection of literature, memory, and space in the context of contemporary (post-1989) Polish writing. In my DPhil project, I examine literary representations of Poland’s pre-Second World War multi-ethnicity, with an emphasis on non-Polish heritage of territories ceded from Germany to Poland in 1945. The close reading that my thesis involves focuses on works by Stefan Chwin, Olga Tokarczuk, Paweł Huelle and Artur Daniel Liskowacki, and considers primarily the texts’ narrative form and conceptualisations of temporality.

Alongside my studies, I have contributed to a number of outreach initiatives – most recently, to the University of Oxford’s UNIQ+ mentoring scheme. Since 2019, I have also taught literature as part of a tutoring programme – which I now have the pleasure of coordinating – offered by Collegium Invisibile, an academic society based in Warsaw, Poland.

My research is possible thanks to the generous support of the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities.