I am so happy to become a fellow of another major European initiative on Russia’s war against Ukraine – a Leibniz Collaborative Excellence Project Documenting Russia’s war against Ukraine, also known as LivArch!
Happy news: my project has been awarded the Denkraum Ukraine Sur-Place Fellowship by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies “Think Space Ukraine” (Denkraum Ukraine)!
At the end of May, I had the pleasure of presenting my doctoral research project at the Department of Theoretical Sociology, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences.
I am happy to become a grantee of the Documenting Ukraine grant by IWM - Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen.
My last scholarly event this year was the XV International Congress of the Spanish Society for Phenomenology (SEFE) at the University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca.
The congress on "Normality, Normativity, Lifeworld" was the perfect place to summarize the path we have passed this year. I say “we” because so many faces were the same as in Copenhagen, Warsaw, Dublin, Darmstadt. I am beginning to feel like part of the community – scattered across the globe yet tightly knit! Plus, escaping to the warm seaside in chilly November was a lovely bonus.
The conference season continues. After Schutzian Copenhagen and Vienna, applied Dublin, and totally Husserlian Warsaw, I remained immersed in Husserl and moved to Darmstadt for a PhD colloquium – a part of the Biannual Conference of the German Society for Phenomenological Research. This year's topic was “Crisis & Critique,” which resonated so perfectly with my project. The aim was the same: to taste different extremes of phenomenology, try to speak different phenomenological languages, and find the most comfortable location within this universe.
My next stop this summer (or is it autumn already?!) is the Summer School in Genetic Phenomenology in Warsaw, organized by gPHEN – International Network for Genetic Phenomenology. A year ago, at this very event, I had my first proper encounter with phenomenology – an encounter that led me to change both my dissertation topic and my supervisors. Without exaggeration, it ranks among the top three decisions I have ever made in my academic life - and today, I'm here again.
The conference in Dublin, Lifeworlds in Crisis: Applying Phenomenology, brought together a striking number of contributions framing crisis in terms of estrangement and alienation. What felt particularly significant was that many of these discussions approached estrangement in a phenomenological register – as a loss of pre-reflective familiarity, as the breakdown of what is normally taken for granted.
This spring, I spent a month at the Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, with NAWA PROM grant for GSSR PhD students.
My visit was kindly hosted by Prof Anna Durnová’s research team, specialising in political and cultural sociology, sociology of emotions, and interpretive methods. Here, I was greeted by the amazing atmosphere of the European University – this unique combination of sophisticated theoretical debates and the relaxed ease and playfulness of the conversation.
What was expected to be just another conference became pivotal to my dissertation. The train Warsaw-Vienna, late April. One day before my presentation at the Schutz Circle conference. I planned to talk about Multiple Realities - the central conference theme in honor of the 80th anniversary of the renowned essay. So, it was a good time to read two other Schutz's essays, The Stranger and The Homecomer. Dan Zahavi had suggested them after my presentation at the Copenhagen winter school, but I still hadn’t gotten around to opening them.