The council of the foundation
Irena Grudzińska-Gross
Irena Grudzińska Gross historian of literature and ideas, emigrated from her native Poland after the unrest of 1968. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 1982. She taught East European literature and history at Emory, New York and Princeton universities and in the Institute of Slavic Studies in the Polish Academy of Sciences, In 2018 she was a Fellow at the Guggenheim Foundation. Her books include “Miłosz and the Long Shadow of War,” 2020, “Golden Harvest” (with Jan T. Gross), 2012; “Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets," 2009; and “The Scar of Revolution: Tocqueville, Custine and the Romantic Imagination,” 1995.
Elżbieta Matynia
Elzbieta Matynia is Professor and Chair of Sociology and Liberal Studies, and founding director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS).
I am a sociologist and historian of ideas, and my work at the crossroads of political and cultural sociology aims to illuminate how dramatic shifts in past and present social imaginaries shape and furnish our future at the local, national, and transregional levels.
At the center of my interests is the state of today’s democracy, which – while still aspirational – has been failing large segments of citizenry whether in the United States, East and Central Europe, or Sub-Saharan Africa. My research explores peaceful transitions to democratic order in various parts of the world, gender equality, and democracy, and the challenges faced by democracies that have emerged with a legacy of violence.
My early book, "Grappling with Democracy: Deliberations on Post-communist Societies (1990-1995)" (1996) is a rare document of semi-clandestine debates on building a democratic order by dissident intellectuals in the countries of the newly defunct Soviet bloc. "Performative Democracy" (2009) examines a potential in political life that easily eludes theorists – the indigenously inspired enacting of democracy by citizens – and identifies the conditions for civic performativity in public life. "An Uncanny Era: Conversations between Václav Havel and Adam Michnik" is a discussion between two iconic dissidents of Eastern Europe, Václav Havel and Adam Michnik, on the precariousness of democracy and early signs of its retreat. The book was listed among the eight Times Higher Education Books of 2014. The essays "How to Kill a Democracy" (2019), and "Is Liberal Democracy Already History? discuss further democratic retreat and decline. In my research and teaching I often explore the arts as a site of social reflection, knowledge, and civic agency (“1989 and the Politics of Democratic Performativity.” in the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society), “Architectures of Gender,” “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” “The Promise of Active Freedom,” “Tribute to a Bridge,” and most recently “Democracy’s Endgame”( https://publicseminar.org/2024/01/democracy-endgame/ ”). I am currently working on a book, “Democracy After Violence.”
I received my MA in literature and philosophy and Ph.D. in sociology from Warsaw University, and came to the United States for post-doctoral studies at the New School’s Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. I taught at Bard and Sarah Lawrence colleges and was then offered a junior position at the New School.
As head of TCDS I developed international fellowship programs in critical studies of democracy and launched the Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes open to civic-minded junior scholars for rigorous cross-cultural study on the critical issues facing today’s world (see a one-minute video lecture here). I am a member of the editorial board of the Social Research International Journal. And am honored to have recently received the 2023 Courage in Public Scholarship Award, established in 2014 by the NSSR/Europe Collective (view a short intro video from the ceremony here.)
Grzegorz Godlewski
Grzegorz Godlewski is a Faculty member of the Department of Polish Studies at the Warsaw University. He is the Professor of Anthropology. His main academic focus is the Anthropology of Word and the Anthropological Theory of Culture. He is the author of several books: Lekcja kryzysu. Źródła kulturalizmu Floriana Znanieckiego (1997), Słowo – pismo – sztuka słowa. Perspektywy antropologiczne (2008), Luneta i radar. Szkice z antropologicznej teorii kultury (2016). Współredaktor podręczników Antropologia kultury (2005) i Antropologia słowa (2003) and the co-editor of several collections of essays and dissertations such as: Animacja kultury. Doświadczenie i przyszłość (2002), Kulturologia polska XX wieku (2013), Od aforyzmu do zinu. Gatunki twórczości słownej (2014), Antropologia praktyk językowych (2016). He is also the founder and a long-standing chairman of the Faculty of the Anthropology of Word. He was in charge of the study project ''Language Practices as Cultural Practices in the Perspective of the Anthropology of Word '' which was implemented between 2012 and 2014. He is a member of the journals "Almanach Antropologiczny", "Przegląd Kulturoznawczy” (''Cultural Studies Review') and of the editorial board of the ''Communicare" book series and the board of ''Kultura Współczesna''. He was a member of the Polish Committee of Cultural Studies at the Polish Academy of Science for three consecutive terms.