Małgorzata Bogunia-Borowska – sociologist, cultural studies scholar, and media studies researcher. Professor at the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University. Graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Management and Social Communication at the Jagiellonian University. She also completed postgraduate studies in economics and management at the Faculty of Law and Administration, within the Department of Applied Economics of the Jagiellonian University.

She specializes in the sociology of everyday life, visual sociology, media education, and media culture. Her research focuses on contemporary cultural and civilizational transformations, particularly various aspects of life in a consumer society. She critically analyzes and examines cultural content and meanings created within television, film, and popular culture in general. Her academic interests also include issues of media education and communication. She is a scholarship holder of the Foundation for Polish Science and a multiple recipient of scholarships from the Government of the Italian Republic. She is a member of the International Sociological Association (ISA), the Polish Sociological Association (PTS), and the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA). She cooperates on a permanent basis with the Civic Institute and the Institute for Market Economics Research.

From January 1993 to August 1994, she participated in the creation of the first private television station in Poland, TV Krater. She anchored the main news broadcast and produced reports and interviews aired during prime time. More information can be found in a report on TV Krater.

Recently, a publication edited by her, “Społeczeństwo cyfrowe” [Digital Society], was released by Scholar Publishing House. In December, a new issue of “Kultura Współczesna” – BIO-TECH-MED – will be published; she is the co-author of its concept together with PhD J. Kopczyńska.

Julia Kubisa - sociologist whose research focuses on transformations of the world of work, job quality, and in particular on issues of workplace discrimination and the role of gender in shaping the social division of labour, job quality, and collective labour relations. She is the author of books and scholarly articles, including publications on gender and discrimination.

Her work also involves researching and developing equality policies within institutions, especially at the University of Warsaw. She is a co-author of the Gender Equality Plan for the University of Warsaw—the first document of this kind in Poland—as well as the Gender Equality Plan for the City of Warsaw Municipal Office, and recommendations for other universities and institutions.

She is the Dean of the Faculty of Sociology and a Professor at the University of Warsaw. From 2019 to 2025, she served as Chair of the Council for Women in the Labour Market at the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, and as Chair of the Section of Sociology of Work of the Polish Sociological Association (PTS).

Justyna Orchowska - sociologist and Assistant Professor at the Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG), University of Warsaw. Since 2025, she has served as Deputy Head of the Urban Studies programme at the UW. Her research interests focus on urban sociology, social inequalities, access to public services, and qualitative research methodology, with a particular emphasis on in-depth and biographical interviews. She is currently conducting research on middle-class housing experiences in Polish cities. She is the author and co-author of academic and expert publications, including the book “White Spots: Warsaw Residents on Public Services” (2022). Her work combines academic research with social engagement; since 2014, she has collaborated with Warsaw-based third-sector organizations and urban social movements.

Katarzyna Ornacka - professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She works in the Sociology of Mental Health and Social Work Lab. She is a sociologist, a clinical social worker, a trainer in personal development and empathy-based communication, a psychotherapist and a member of international scientific societies: EASSW, POWERUS and the Global Childhood Network, Editor-in-Chief of Issues in Social Work journal (until 2023) and regular reviewer for the Journal of Social Work and Social Work. Her main research interests include: sociology of childhood, family systems, mental health of children and adolescents, social work, mental health in organizations that are (un)responsive to harm. She is a member of the JU Mental Health Research Team. She conducts participatory research working within BEHAVIOR IN CRISIS LAB JU on the project Social Welfare Institutions: A Trauma-Informed Approach, focusing on welfare institutions confronted with the necessity of methodical responses to emergency situations and humanitarian crises.  

Krystyna Romaniszyn – researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University. Her academic interests include sociology, economic anthropology, and the sociology of migration. While conducting her own research, she has been a visiting scholar at universities in Cambridge, Berlin, Vienna, and Athens. Her major publications include Krótki wykład o utowarowieniu (2015), Nowa droga do zniewolenia? O życiu w społeczeństwie konsumpcyjnym (2011), Culture and migration (2009), Rzecz o pracy. Analiza antropologiczna (2007), and Świat gospodarek ludzkich (1994). Her scholarly output also includes works based on autobiographical materials, such as Chłopi polscy w Kanadzie (1896–1939) (1991) and Zmiany postaw emigrantów polskich do Brazylii i Stanów Zjednoczonych (1890–1891) (1980).

 

Magdalena Ślusarczyk - sociologist and Germanist, Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology of Jagiellonian University. She focuses on issues related to the changes in educational systems and migration processes, particularly in the context of family migration. She has been involved in numerous international (e.g. Erasmus+, Norway Grants, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe) and national (OPUS) projects, currently she is a leader of the Polish team in the project Strategies for achieving equity and inclusion in education, training, and learning in democratic Europe (STRIDE, Horizon). She is a member of the Migration Research Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and the Council for Family and Demographic Policy at the Ministry of Family and Social Policy (MRPiPS).

Sylwia Urbańska - sociologist working at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw. Her main research interests focus on transformations of gender relations, patterns of family and intimate life in the context of migration and in rural communities. She is particularly interested in groups and communities that experience multiple forms of exclusion. Her work also addresses qualitative research methodology and the ethics of social research.

She is the author of the book Matka Polka na odległość. Z doświadczeń migracyjnych robotnic 1989–2009 (Monografie Fundacji Nauki Polskiej, 2015), a co-author of the monograph Poza granicami: płeć społeczno-kulturowa w katolickich organizacjach migracyjnych w Anglii, Belgii i Szwecji (2020), and a co-editor of Mozaiki przestrzeni transnarodowych. Teorie–metody–zjawiska (2010).

In 2021–2022, she worked on a series of reportages from the Polish–Belarusian and Polish–Ukrainian borders, published in Krytyka Polityczna. From 2019 to 2023, she served as President of the Polish Gender Society, and for several years she has been a lecturer in Gender Studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN). Her articles have been published, among others, in Studia Socjologiczne, Lud, Ethnologia Polona, Stan Rzeczy, Men and Masculinity Studies; Gender, Place and Culture; and Central and Eastern European Migration Research.

She is currently working on texts devoted to the emancipation of contemporary rural women. She is also a co-author of the report Mieszkanki wsi w działaniu: lokalne rewolucje (2025, Fundusz Feministyczny).

Renata Włoch - professor, Head of the Chair of Digital Sociology at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, and Scientific Director of DELab UW. She holds degrees in international relations and sociology. She is the author and co-author of numerous academic publications, including the monographs The Economics of Digital Transformation (2021), Gospodarka cyfrowa. Jak nowe technologie zmieniają świat (2020), and Socjologia cyfrowa. O uspołecznieniu technologii i technologiach uspołecznienia (2025). She also works as an evaluator and has authored numerous expert reports and analyses on the digital transformation of the economy and society for businesses and public institutions. In her research, she consistently pursues an interdisciplinary approach, combining qualitative methods with new digital methods. She currently leads the Polish part of two international research projects—Horizon InAir and Erasmus+ USMED—focused on diagnosing and developing digital skills in low-digitisation sectors of the economy.

Andrzej Bukowski - professor at the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University. His scholarly interests focus on regionalism, local and regional development, democracy and civil society, urban studies, and sociological theory. He has participated in and coordinated numerous research projects funded by Polish and international institutions, including the Committee for Scientific Research, the National Science Centre (Poland), the European Union, and the World Bank. Currently, his research concentrates on the material aspects of social practices.

Adam Mrozowicki – Head of the Department of Sociology of Work and Economy at the Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław, since October 2017. He obtained his PhD in social sciences in 2009 at the Centre for Sociological Research at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium). He has been employed at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Wrocław since October 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the degree of habilitated doctor of social sciences in the discipline of sociology, with a specialization in economic sociology, at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Wrocław.

His research interests include the sociology of work, economic sociology, comparative research on collective labor relations, studies on precarization, critical social realism, and the methodology of biographical research. At the University of Wrocław, he has led research projects funded by the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme and Horizon Europe, the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission, the Foundation for Polish Science, and the National Science Centre (Poland).

He is Vice-Chair of the Section of Sociology of Work of the Polish Sociological Association, a member of the editorial boards of Przegląd Socjologiczny (The Sociological Review), the European Journal of Industrial Relations, and Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research. He is the principal investigator of the National Science Centre (NCN) OPUS project “COV-WORK: Socio-economic awareness, work experiences, and coping strategies of Poles in the context of the post-pandemic crisis”, as well as the leader of a research team in the Horizon Europe project INCA – INcrease Corporate Political Responsibility and Accountability (project no. 101061653).

Tomasz Szlendak - sociologist, director of the Doctoral School of Social Sciences at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. He studies changes in customs, relations between women and men, and cultural policy. He is a member of the Polish Council for Scientific Excellence. He awarded the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture Gloria Artis and the Cicero Award granted by the Association of ProfessionalSpeakers. His latest book is entitled Miłość nie istnieje (Love Does Not Exist, ZNAK 2025).

Agnieszka Hess – professor, media researcher, Chair of the Council for Social Communication and Media Studies at the Jagiellonian University, heads the Department of Media Studies at the Institute of Journalism, Media and Social Communication at the Jagiellonian University. A long-standing expert and advisor in international and national implementation and research projects. Her interests focus on the processes of mediatization and political communication, issues of civic participation, and research on discourse and public opinion. Author of over a hundred scientific publications in the field of social communication and media studies.

Katarzyna Dębska is a scholar whose research focuses on gender studies, the sociology of family life and intimacy, feminist theory, issues of social inequalities, and qualitative research methodology. Her doctoral dissertation examined sibling relationships from a life-course perspective. She is also interested in the categories of sisterhood and brotherhood, as well as non-hierarchical relationships among women beyond the family context, including social movements and informal groups. In her sociological research, she places particular emphasis on linking empirical fieldwork with a strong grounding in social theory. She has published in Polish and international academic journals. She is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, and a lecturer in Gender Studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Anna Szwed - sociologist, an assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her research interests focus on gender and religion, lived religion and religion in the public sphere. She is the author of articles on women and Catholicism, digital religion and the Roman Catholic Church’s discourse on gender. She was the principal investigator in the project “Resistance and Subordination. Religious Agency of Roman Catholic Women in Poland”, funded by the National Science Centre, Poland. Currently she is involved as a researcher in the project on secular practices in Poland (NSC/NCN) and in "RELIDEM: Religious Realignments and Democratic Resilience - A Comparative Study of Religious Responses to (geo)political Crises" (HERA/Chanse).

Roma Sendyka - professor at Jagiellonian University, where she works in the Chair of Anthropology of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Polish Studies. She is the co-founder and the first head (2014–2024) of the Research Center for Memory Cultures. Her research focuses on theories and practices of cultural studies, with particular emphasis on visual culture studies and memory studies. She is the author of The Modern Essay: A Study of the Genre’s Historical Consciousness (Kraków, 2006), From the Culture of the “I” to the Culture of the Self (Kraków, 2015), and Beyond the Camp: Non-Sites of Memory – An Attempt at Recognition (Warsaw, 2021). She is the co-editor of several volumes on memory studies, as well as A Close-Up View: Other Images of the Holocaust [English edition: Terribly Close: Polish Vernacular Artists Face the Holocaust] (Krytyka Polityczna, Warsaw, 2023). She also co-curated the exhibition A Close-Up View: Other Images of the Holocaust (2018–2019). She is currently working on a theory of non-sites of memory, bystanders of the Holocaust, understandings of the Holocaust from a Central and Eastern European perspective, and visual studies in the context of genocide.

Piotr Nowak – rural sociologist and Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University. His academic interests focus on two main areas: the sociology of rural areas and agriculture, as well as the sociology of tourism and sport. He conducts research on rural development, agricultural policy, and rural tourism. He applies his academic expertise in consulting and expert work for institutions supporting local and rural communities. He is the author and manager of international and national research projects on the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in Poland, rural development, and social innovation in rural areas.

Marta Smagacz-Poziemska - in her research and teaching at the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University, she combines interests in the city, space, local communities, participation, and social practice theory. She has served as the coordinator of Research Network 37 – Urban Sociology within the European Sociological Association (ESA) and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of JPI Urban Europe. She is a member of the Main Board of the Polish Sociological Association. She currently leads the project Normality under Conditions of Uncertainty: A Praxeological Perspective in Research on the (Re)Production of “Normal” Urban Life (NCN OPUS). For over 20 years—working as an expert, researcher, and moderator—she has collaborated with local, regional, and international public institutions as well as non-governmental organizations.

Maciej Gdula – sociologist, researcher of social classes. Drawing on the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, he has conducted research on the class system, the middle class in contemporary Poland, and the connections between social classes and political processes. He works at the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Warsaw.

Antonina Doroszewska - specializes in the sociology of health, illness, and medicine, with a particular focus on medical professions and on issues related to relationships and communication between healthcare professionals and patients. She works at the Medical Communication Unit of the Medical University of Warsaw. She teaches medical students how to communicate with patients and collaborate with colleagues. Her research lies at the intersection of sociology, medical communication, and medical education. She is the author of several dozen academic publications and has delivered numerous conference presentations.

Jolanta Perek-Białas - economist, sociologist and gerontologist dealing with ageing issues but also with methodological ones (surveys, mix-method approach). She received the Leslie Kish Scholarship in Survey Sampling (2002, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan) and as well she has been a Guest Lecturer in Survey Sampling Program (2020, 2021 and 2024).Besides of working in Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University, as well she is Head of the Center for Evaluation and Public Policies Analysis, also employed in the Institute of Statistics and Demography at the Warsaw School of Economics.

Her research interest focuses mainly on socio-economic situation of older persons in Central and Eastern Europe, including active ageing, ageism in the labour market policy (COST ACTION on Ageism, COST ACTION on Socio-Economic Exclusion of Older Persons, MSCA-ITN Euroageism, COST ACTION LeverAge, COST ACTION Digi-Net), old age social exclusion, age-friendly approach and organization of care for older persons, supporting working caregivers. However, her second expertise is methodology while she is not only teaching (graduate, PhD students and other academics) but also she is engaged in designing, organization and evaluation and monitoring surveys via various projects (cross-sectional and longitudinal). As well she is an Advisor and Consultant in methodological aspects of research for academia, governmental and public institutions, private sector.

She has been coordinator of various research projects as well as an expert consultant to policy makers at the local (Cracow city), regional (Małopolska region), national (Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy) and international levels (like OECD, EC, UNECE, WHO in 2023 on age friendly program).