Prof. Mateusz Borowski from the JU Faculty of Polish Studies Chair in Performative Studies has the Fulbright Slavic Award 2024–2025 grant, within the framework of which he will assume a teaching position at the University of Illinois in the US. Additionally, as many as 15 students from the Jagiellonian University will participate in a one year-long scholarship in one of four renowned American research centres in Austin, Charlottesville, Chicago and Oklahoma City thanks to the funding from the BioLAB programme.
Fulbright Slavic Award is a 4-month lecturing scholarship programme for Polish scholars who specialise in Slavic culture (literature, media, art) or the history, politics, and economy of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. Program is conducted in partnership with two American universities: the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) or Ohio State University in Columbus (OSU).
Dr hab. Mateusz Borowski, Prof. UJ will carry out an MA/PhD seminar entitled Capturing Catastrophe: Central and East-European Environmental Disturbances in Cinematic Media at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Prof. Borowski is the head of the Performance Studies programme at the Chair of Performance Studies of the JU Faculty of Polish Studies. He successfully defended his PhD thesis on contemporary European drama in 2005 at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. His chief interests include speculative fabulation and counterfactual narration regarding current ecological and civilisational crises. He is the author of the books Strategie zapominania. Pamięć i kultura cyfrowa [Strategies of forgetting. Memory and digital culture] and Artificial natures. Performances of Technoscience and Art (together with Prof. Małgorzata Sugiera). He is the co-editor of the books Emerging Affinities: Possible Future of Performative Arts and Niespodziewane alianse. Sztuki performatywne jutra [Unexpected alliances. The performative art of tomorrow] and co-author of the paper Performanse pamięci w literaturach i sztukach [The performances of memory in literatures and arts], written as part of the ‘Beethoven’ research project. In collaboration with Prof. Małgorzata Sugiera, he translated numerous research papers and plays from English, German and French, the latest being Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment by Rebecca Schneider. He is a member of the board of editors of the journal Contemporary Drama Review as well as a series of publications entitled Drama zwischen text und Bühne published by Brill. Since 2022, he is the head of the OPUS 22 grant Po kryzysie klimatycznym. Nieskalowalne strategie przetrwania w fabulacjach spekulatywnych ostatnich dwóch dekad [After the climate crisis. Unscalable survival strategies in speculative fabulation in the last two decades] as well as the supervisor of the Polish team within the framework of a CELSA grant Re-Familiarising the Body and its Umwelt: the Uncanny Imaginary as a Tool to Cope with Contemporary Societal Changes in post-2004 Europe (REFAM).
The BioLAB programme is a one year internship for students of the biological, chemical and medical fields of study. During the internship students participate in current, important research projects, under the guidance of experienced researchers, at one of four selected American institutions: the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
Since its inception, more than 300 students have participated in the programme. Approximately 20% of the graduates of this program continued their studies at the PhD level in the US, and another 20% were accepted to the top universities and research institutions in Europe, including Oxford, Cambridge, Max Planck and ETH. Overall, 90% of the students have continued their careers at PhD level. The contributions of students who have participated in the programme are documented by numerous papers, which they have co-authored, based on the research they conducted in the U.S.
For this year’s competition we received 130 applications. Recruitment consisted of two stages: formal and substantive evaluation of the electronic application form, and interviews with the selection committee. This year’s interviews were conducted in-person in Kraków, Warsaw and Gdańsk.
The following Jagiellonian University students will study abroad within the framework of the BioLAB programme:
Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation
- Marcin Ostoja-Hełczyński
- Iwona Pasionek
- Yelyzaveta Rudenko
- Dominika Siodłak
- Mateusz Szczepaniak
University of Chicago
- Daniel Jankowski
- Anna Tabor
- Nataliia Voloshchuk
University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center
- Karolina Juzba
University of Virginia
- Maria Bednarczyk
- Katarzyna Bednarczyk
- Patrycja Jakubiec
- Mariia Oliinyk
- Michał Sobstel
- Wiktoria Szwalec
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange programme of the US government. For over 75 years, the Fulbright Program has supported cooperation for the development of science, culture, and interpersonal, as well as inter-institutional relations between the United States and over 160 countries. The task of the Program is not only to support the scientific community, but also to promote creative leadership. Shaping future social leaders, politicians and government advisers is an activity of the Commission, part of the process of realizing Fulbright’s dream of living in peace and reducing the risk of international conflicts. Thanks to the graduates of the Program, awareness and intercultural sensitivity are instilled in those people who directly decide about social order in the world.
