The editorial team upholds the journal’s mission to contribute to the advancement of academic and artistic research on visual culture and contemporary art through a publishing policy that promotes inclusive, informed, and ethical academic debate based on reliable scholarly publications of the highest possible quality. The ethical conduct of our publishing practice is presented in Publication Ethics and Open Access Statement
The editors are responsible for:
- content development of the journal and initiating thematic clusters;
- preliminary selection of submitted articles and making final decisions on publication after completion of the review process;
- organization and evaluation of the peer review process;
- communication with authors, reviewers, and readers;
- organization and implementation of the entire publishing process (including revisions);
- maintaining and enhancing the journal's reputation in the academic communities.
Editors
Katarzyna Bojarska
Assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Studies of the SWPS University. From 2008 to 2019, she worked in the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Co-founder of Widok. Since 2024 head of Center for Comparative Research on Memory Cultures (CCRM). Author of articles and translations interested in the relations of art, literature, history and psychoanalysis. She translated among others Michael Rothberg's "Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization" (Warsaw 2016). Author of a book "Wydarzenia po Wydarzeniu: Białoszewski – Richter – Spiegelman" [Events after the Event: Białoszewski – Richter – Spiegelman] (Warsaw 2012). Editor and one of translators of Ernst van Alphen's book "Criticism as Intervention: Art, Memory, Affect" (Krakow 2019). Receipient of numerous research grants and awards, including Fulbright, National Centre for Science, Horizon2020.
Łukasz Kiełpiński
PhD Candidate at the Doctoral School of Humanities, University of Warsaw. His research combines theory and history of film with critical theory. He is the principal investigator of a research grant examining the contribution of Central and Eastern European emigrants to the postwar American film avant-garde (“Pearls of Science,” funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education). He conducted research in this field at the University of Toronto (2023–2024), Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) as a Jerzy Giedroyc Fellow (2024–2025), and the University of California, Berkeley, as a Fulbright Junior Researcher (2025–2026). Recipient of Graduate Research Award from Polish Studies Association. His work has been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy, Kultura Współczesna, Stan Rzeczy, Pleograf, IWM Post, and Ekrany. He is also a film critic awarded in Krzysztof Mętrak Competition for the best Polish film criticism from young contributors (2023-2025).
Magdalena Moskalewicz
Art historian, curator, and editor specializing in postwar Polish and Eastern European art, critical museum studies, and contemporary practices. Her curatorial projects often explore parallels between the postcommunist and postcolonial condition. She published in academic books (from Brill, Routledge, Oxford Univ. Press, MSN), exhibition catalogues (from MoMA, Tate, Berlin Biennale), journals and magazines (Artium Quaestiones, Art in America, The Washington Post). Moskalewicz was awarded Jean Goldman „Literary Lions” Book Prize 2017 (for Halka/Haiti) and Mary Zirin Prize 2020 from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies; her research was supported by A.W. Mellon Foundation, Kosciuszko Foundation, The Getty, The Clark, et al. She worked in higher education and art institutions in Europe and the United States, including: Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, FRONT International in Cleveland, and was the curator of the Polish Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Currently Chief Curator and Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs at Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Agata Pietrasik
Art historian and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Her research focuses on the representation and memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War in mid-20th century European visual arts and culture. She holds degrees from the University of Warsaw (2009) and the Freie Universität in Berlin (2017). Her first book, Art in a Disruptive World: Poland, 1939-1949, was published by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2021. Currently, she is working on the project How Exhibitions Rebuilt Europe: Exhibiting War Crimes in the 1940s and an exhibition on early war crimes and Holocaust exhibitions at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
Krzysztof Pijarski
Visual artist, researcher, educator, curator, and producer. Associate professor at the Faculty of Design / SWPS University, where he is chair of artistic and design research; member of the Visual Narratives Laboratory (which co-founded and co-directed in 2019-2024) at the Film School in Lodz (https://vnLab.org), where he taught in 2009-2025. The vnLab is a media lab focused on the evolution of visual storytelling into such areas as XR, stereoscopic 3D, interactive web-based pieces, or the film essay. A big part of his work at the vnLab was focused on the Interactive Narratives Studio, where he worked on developing webdocs and other narrative and archival interactive pieces, especially in the transmedial space. His interests lie above all in exploring convincing visual forms of thinking by way of visual essays, atlases, analogies. He likes working between fact and fiction, with visual intelligence, distance, and the ability of going beyond the established uses and conventions of photography. Out of his engagement with bound content, he initiated the PubLab Collective around his vision for web publications as an evolution of the printed book.
Recipient of a Fulbright Junior Research Grant at Hohns Hopkins University (2009-2010), and grants, among others, from the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, and the Shpilman Institute of Photography. Headed and partcipated in grants from the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education, the National Science Centre, and the National Programme for the Development of Humanities.
Authored a monograph on modernism as seen through the the dual prism of the figure of Michael Fried and photography as a technology that changed our understanding of art (Archeologia modernizmu. Michael Fried i nowoczesne doświadczenie sztuki [An Archeology of Modernism. Michael Fried, Photography, and the Modern Experience of Art], 2017), as well as (Post)Modern Fate of Images: Allan Sekula / Thomas Struth (2013). Edited the volumes Ludzie i rzeczy: „Zapis socjologiczny” Zofii Rydet (2022), Object Lessons: Zofia Rydet’s „Sociological Record” (2017), and The Archive as Project (2011). A collection of his translations of essays by Allan Sekula was published by the Warsaw University Press in 2010.
Zofia Rohozińska
Sociologist and art historian, PhD student at the Doctoral School of Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw, graduate of the Faculty of Visual Culture Management at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Interdepartmental Individual Studies in the Humanities at the University of Warsaw. Awarded in 2021 by the GESSEL Foundation for Zachęta National Gallery of Art for the best MA thesis. She has participated in research projects of the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. As part of her doctoral studies she is researching the mechanisms of knowledge production in the Polish art field on the example of the discourse changes around socialist realism.
Dorota Sosnowska
Assistant Professor at the Institute of Polish Culture (Department of Theater and Performance) at University of Warsaw. The author of the book about three actresses of the communist period in Poland entitled “Królowe PRL. Sceniczne wizerunki Ireny Eichlerówny, Niny Andrycz i Elżbiety Barszczewskiej jako modele kobiecości” (2014). She has participated in scientific projects "Sources and Mediations" (NPRH funds), "Performances of Memory" (NCN) and "Mask in the Culture of Modern Europe" (NCN). She has published articles in Polish and foreign academic journals such as "Performance Research" and Czech "Theatralia". She is co-editor of the book Robotnik. Performances of Memory (Theater Institute/KiP, 2017). She is currently working on the project "Odmieńcy. Performances of Otherness in the Polish Transition Culture" (NCN) and is a co-investigator in the project "Epidemics and Communities in Critical Theories, Artistic Practices and Speculative Fiction of Recent Decades". She is a member of the Historiography working group within the International Federation for Theater Research. From 2009 to 2011, she worked at the Dramatyczny Theater in Warsaw.
Tytus Szabelski-Różniak
Photographer and visual artist, lecturer at Łódź Film School. Graduated journalism and social communication at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, and photography at the University of Arts in Poznań, where he completed his doctoral studies. Former editor of Magenta, online magazine dedicated to contemporary photography, Postmedium art academic journal and Central-Eastern European art magazine BLOK.
Krzysztof Świrek
Sociologist, assistant professor at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, where he defended his PhD thesis in 2016. His scientific interests include theories of ideology, symbolic power and social classes. He lectures on classical sociological theories, and has conducted seminars on conceptions of modernity and psychoanalytical analysis of power. He is an author of the book Teorie ideologii na przecięciu marksizmu i psychoanalizy [Theories of ideology at the junction of Marxism and psychoanalysis] (2018). Świrek published in "European Journal of Social Theory”, „Studia Socjologiczne”, „Societas/Communitas”, „Przegląd Humanistyczny”, „Hybris”, and others. As a film critic he has collaborated with „Kino” monthly and „dwutygodnik.com”.
Former members of the editorial team
Iwona Kurz
B. 1972. Works in the Institute of Polish Culture at University of Warsaw. Main field of interests: history of Polish culture of XX century in visual perspective, anthropology of body and gender, anthropology of visual culture. Author of Twarze w tłumie (Faces in the Crowd. Views of the heroes of collective imagination in Polish culture 1955–1969; Bolesław Michałek Award for the best film studies book in 2005; Nike Literary Award: short-listed for the best book in 2005), co-author of Obyczaje polskie. Wiek XX w krótkich hasłach (Polish Everyday Culture. 20th Century in Short Entries, 2008), editor of Film i historia. Antologia (Film and History. Anthology, 2008), co-editor of readers Antropologia ciała (Anthropology of the Body, 2008) and Antropologia kultury wizualnej (Anthropology of Visual Culture, 2012).
Paweł Mościcki
Born 1981. Professor in the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in the Department of the Research on Literature and Culture of Late Modernity. Philosopher, essaist, translator. His main interests are: contemporary philosophy, theater, visual arts, literature and critical political thought. He has translated (and co-translated) books by Alain Badiou, Derek Attridge, Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Rancière. He is the editor of the book Maurice Blanchot. Literatura ekstremalna [Maurice Blanchot. The Extreme Literature] (Warsaw 2007) and the author of Polityka teatru. Eseje o sztuce angażującej [Politics of Theater. Essays on Engaging Art] (Warsaw 2008), Godard. Pasaże [Godard. Arcades Project] (2010) and Idea potencjalności. Możliwość filozofii według Giorgio Agambena [The Idea of Potentiality. The Possibility of Philosophy according to Giorgio Agamben] (2013), My też mamy już przeszłość. Guy Debord i historia jako pole bitwy [We Too Have Our Past. Guy Debord and History as a Battlefield] (2015), Foto-konstelacje. Wokół Marka Piaseckiego [Photo-Constellations. On Marek Piasecki] (2016), Migawki z tradycji uciśnionych[Snapshots From the Tradition of the Oppressed] (2017), Chaplin. Przewidywanie teraźniejszości [Chaplin. Prevision of the Present] (2017), Lekcje futbolu[Lessons of Football] (2019), Azyl [Asylum] (2022), Wyższa aktualność. Studia o współczesności Dantego [Higher Actuality. Studies in Dante's Contemporaneity] (2022). He also writes a blog: pawelmoscicki.net
Magda Szcześniak
Born 1985. Assistant Professor at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw, leader of the MA program in visual culture. Author of books Normy widzialności. Tożsamość w czasach transformacji [Norms of Visibility. Identity in Times of Transition, 2016] and Poruszeni. Awans i emocje w socjalistycznej Polsce [Feeling Moved. Upward Mobility and Emotions in Socialist Poland, 2023], co-author of the two-volume Kultura wizualna w Polsce [Visual Culture in Poland, 2017]. Recipient of the Fulbright Foundation Junior Advanced Research Grant (2010/11, University of Rochester, Graduate Program for Visual and Cultural Studies) and the Fulbright Foundation Senior Award (2019/20, Duke University, Institute for Critical Theory). She has also received stipends and grants from the National Science Center (Preludium grant, 2013-2015; Sonata grant, 2018-2023) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Science (stipend for outstanding young scholars, 2017-2020). In 2017, she won the prestigious award for young scholars granted by the "Polityka" weekly (Nagroda Naukowa Polityki). She has published articles in numerous academic journals, including New Literary History, Oxford Art Journal, Journal of Visual Culture, Teksty Drugie, Dialog, Konteksty, Kultura i Społeczeństwo. She is currently leading a research project titled Representations of the popular classes in contemporary Polish visual culture.
Tomasz Szerszeń
Born 1981. Photographer, anthropologist and historian. A graduate of the Photography Department of National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź and Inter-faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities at the University of Warsaw, recently granted a Ph.D. degree in Humanities. He is also a member of editorial board of quarterly “Konteksty” and researcher in Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences. He is an author of dozens of texts published in books and in such a reviews like “Konteksty”, “Literatura na Świecie”, “Tygodnik Powszechny”, “Res Publica Nowa”, “Dwutygodnik.com”. His artistic projects were presented in Gallery of Foundation Archeology of Photography in Warsaw (You. Me. Things in 2012 and Warsaw / Lives / Ruins alsoin 2012 – second one with Krzysztof Pijarski) and in Exchange Gallery in Łódź (I Was the First Polish Surrealist. Works From the Years 1929-39 in 2010). His works were shown on Paris Photo 2012.
Łukasz Zaremba
Born 1983. He teaches at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. Translator, independent curator. His theoretical interests include theory of visual culture and methodology of visual research. He is the recipient of Ministry of Science and Higher Education Scholarship and the Foundation of Polish Science Scholarship. Co-translator of Jonathan Crary’s Suspensions of Perception and translator of W.J.T. Mitchell’s What Do Pictures Want?, Hito Steyerl's Wretched of the Screen and Nicholas Mirzoeff's How to See the World. Co-editor of academic reader Antropologia kultury wizualnej [Anthropology of Visual Culture] (2012) and Kultura wizualna w Polsce [Visual Culture in Poland vol. 1-2]. Author of academic book Obrazy wychodzą na ulice [Images Walk Onto the Streets] (2018).
Agata Zborowska
Born 1986. She defended her PhD, entitled Życie rzeczy w powojennej Polsce (1945-1949) (The Life of Things in Post-War Poland), at the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw. Author of articles in numerous academic journals, including:, „Konteksty”, „Kultura Współczesna”, „Kultura Popularna”, „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, „Czas Kultury”, „Fashion Theory”, „Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty”. In 2020, she received a Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship (2021). In 2019, she was a Post-doc Fellow at The University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology. Agata was a visiting scholar at Indiana University Bloomington (2016), at University College London (2014), and Carleton University in Ottawa (2011). She was the recipient of individual grants PRELUDIUM (2015–2019) and ETIUDA (2017–2018) from the National Science Centre in Poland. She was a member of the research team in the Horizon 2020 project: “Re-Past – Revisiting the Past, Anticipating the Future.” Her research interests lay in material culture, property relations, critical theory, and cultural history of the 20th century. She is currently working on the experience of ownership changes in socialist and post-socialist transitions in Poland.
Copy-editors
Justyna Chmielewska
Anthropologist, Turkish studies specialist, editor. She completed a series of editing courses at the Polish Book Publishers’ Association, member of the Editors and Proofreaders Forum. Since 2007 she is part of the editorial staff of Konteksty quarterly. Author of articles, reviews and photo essays published in Konteksty, Nowe Książki, Notes na 6 tygodni, Widok, Dziennik Opinii, (op.cit.,), and Kultura Liberalna.
Darren Durham
Native English proofreader, resident in Poland. Has worked with HBO, Ossolineum (inc. Muzeum Pana Tadeusza), BWA Wrocław, Dom Spotkań z Historią, Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa (inc. Fabryka Schindlera), Fundacja Kulik-KwieKulik, Akademia Muzyczna w Krakowie, Małgorzata Rejmer, and Glissando, among others.
Daniel Malone
Artist, proofreader/subeditor. Art History and Fines Arts degrees, Auckland University, New Zealand.
Kacha Szaniawska
Editor, sociologist, graduate of the University of Warsaw and the School of Social Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She edits literature on philosophy and social sciences, new media, art history and architecture.
Former copy-editors
Julia Odnous
Born 1985. Editor and photoeditor. Alumna of the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw.
Alasdair Cullen
Alasdair graduated from Glasgow University in 2003 with a joint degree in Russian and Film and Television Studies. He's been living in Poland since 2005, lectures at Applied Lingustics, Warsaw University, and works as a freelance translator of Polish and Russian, and a proofreader of English texts.