Modern History
History of Science and Scholarship
History of Intelligence Research
Current Projects
The Bodies of Intelligences and their Environments
The project explores various discourses of intelligence as reflection of diverse social and political theories. The focus of the project lies on the collective dimensions of ‘intelligence,’ i.e. the social and political ‘bodies’ that have been conceived as bearers of ‘intelligence.’ In various contexts, the entire humanity, civilization, a state, a nation, a society, a social class, individual professions or gender-related groups could become such 'bodies' of intelligence. Dealing with these issues, the project focuses on the sources in German, Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Curriculum Vitae
01/2025– 09/2025 Research Associate at the Chair for the History of Science/Spokesperson of the Research Center ‘Political Epistemologies of Central and Eastern Europe (PECEE)’, University of Erfurt
01/2023–12/2024 Walter Benjamin Fellow at the Chair for the History of Science, University of Erfurt
10/2021– 12/2022 Research Associate at the Chair for the History of Science, University of Erfurt
03/2021– 09/2021 Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Erfurt
04/2018–03/2021 EUmanities Research Fellow at the Graduate School for the Humanities a.r.t.e.s., the University of Cologne
10/2018– Associate Fellow at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe
01/2020–02/2020 Chercheur invité at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris)
09/2017–12/2017 Assistant researcher at the Center for the History of Ideas and Sociology of Knowledge (Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
Fellowships and Grants
01/2023–12/2024 Walter Benjamin Fellowship of the German Research Foundation
09/2020–12/2020 Visiting Fellowship at the German Historical Institute, Warsaw
04/2018–03/2021 EUmanities Research Fellowship of the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
09/2017–07/2018 Poletayev’s fellowship for scholarly achievements (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
12/2016 Visiting Fellowship at the University of Warsaw (Faculty “Artes Liberales”)
Education
2021 PhD from the University of Cologne (cotutelle with the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences); certificate „Doctor Europaeus“
2018 M.A. in the History of Knowledge from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow)
2017 M.A. in Cultural and Intellectual History between East and West from the University of Cologne
Publications
Monographs
2023 Public Knowledge in Cold War Poland: Scholarly Battles and the Clash of Virtues, 1945-1956, London & New York: Routledge
Chapters in books
- 2025 (in print) Sovietization, in: Katrin Steffen, Maciej Górny, Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk (eds.), Routledge History of Poland, London/New York: Routledge.
- 2022 ‘Periodisations’ in Intellectual History: On the Plurality of Continuities in the post-war Public Debates of Poland, in: Jade McGlynn, Lucian George (Eds.): Rethinking Period Boundaries: New Approaches to Continuity and Discontinuity in Modern European History and Culture, Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, pp. 149 – 174.
Peer-reviewed articles
- 2026 (under review) ‚Die assoziierende Macht der Intelligenz‘: Auf der Suche nach ‚intelligenten‘ Formen sozialer und politischer Organisation [‚The associating Power of Intelligence‘: In Search of ‚Intelligent‘ Forms of Social and Political Organisation]
- 2025 (in print) The Masters and Victims of Partisanship: Arnošt Kolman and Adam Schaff on the crossroads of partisan science, in: Science in Context Vol. 37 (2)
- 2021 The Academic Virtues in Public Discussion: Adam Schaff and the Campaign against the Lvov-Warsaw School in Post-War Poland, in: Studia Historiae Scientiarum, Vol. 20, pp. 711–753.
- 2020 Auf dem Weg zur „Einheit“: Józef Chałasiński und die Suche nach einer „erlaubten“ Genealogie der Soziologie im Nachkriegspolen (1945–1951) [On the Way to ‘Unity’: Józef Chałasiński and the Search for a ‘Permissible’ Genealogy of
Sociology in Post-War Poland (1945–1951)], in: NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, Vol. 28 (4), pp. 519–546.
- 2019 The „Scientific View“ of the Intelligentsia: The Literary Roots of Scholarly Public Debates in Post-War Poland (1946–1948), in: HISTORYKA. Studia Metodologiczne Vol. 49, pp. 77–100
- 2019Theory in Action: French Personalism in the Public Debates of Post-war Poland, in: Reliģiski-filozofiski raksti XXV, pp. 277–293.
- 2019 Conceptualising „Anti-Zionism“: Piasecki’s Group as an Intellectual Resource for the 1968 Antisemitic Campaign in People’s Poland, in: Europa Orientalis. Studi e ricerche sui paesi dell'Est europeo, 38 (2019), pp. 103–118.
Public Outreach
An Interview for New Books Network
Short lectures for the German Historical Institute Warsaw "Public Knowledge in Cold War Poland" I, II, III.
"Virtues as a Lens: Exploring Science, Scholarship, and Politics under Soviet - Domination" for the Blog "History of Knowledge: Research, Resources, and Perspectives"
HIRA Book Launch: Public Knowledge in Cold War Poland
Presentations
02/2025 The Political Bodies of Intelligence and their Environments [Die politischen Körper der Intelligenz und ihre Umwelten], paper; Workshop „Same old or new turn? Political Epistemology revisited“, Universität Erfurt
03/2025 ‘Intelligent Social Bodies’ in the German Scientific Discourses of the 19th Century [‚Inteligentne ciała społeczne‘ w niemieckojęzycznych dyskursach naukowych 19. wieku] Lecture; The Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
09/2024 Compulsion to partisanship: Scientific (anti-) activism and 'State Socialism' [Zwang zur Parteilichkeit: Wissenschaftlicher (Anti-)Aktivismus und der ‚Staatssozialismus‘] Conference paper; The Annual Congress of the German Society of the History of Sciences, Medicine, and Technics, Luneburg (Germany)
09/2024 A ‘Democratic’ Intelligence and an ‘Intelligent’ Democracy: Making ‘Scientific’ Virtues Political in Central and Eastern Europe, 1870s – 1920s. Conference paper; Science, Technology, Humanity, and the Earth. The Eleventh Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), Barcelona (Spain)
05/2024 ‘The associating Power of Intelligence’: Theories of Collective Thinking and Social Formation in the long 19th Century [Die assoziierende Macht der Intelligenz‘: Theorien des kollektiven Denkens und sozialer Formierung im langen 19. Jahrhundert], Research Colloquium, Department of Pedagogical Studies, University of Halle-Wittenberg