Doctoral Candidates

Marlena Nikody

© Marlena Nikody

I joined the CARMAH team as one of the researchers in the project Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital ‘Post-Truth’ European Society. I am a Ph.D. student in the Doctoral School in the Humanities at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. My research interests focus on reparative educational practices in Poland’s historical museums against populist practices in Polish museology.

In the years 2017-2020, I was working in the Art Knowledge Department at MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, where I was responsible for co-creating the educational program. I was co-organizer of the project Twentieth / Twenty-First Century: History, Art, Education, based on the book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder and structured as lessons about history, democracy, and art for young adults. I was also a curator of two exhibitions:

The Polish Phantom by Israeli artist Dana Arieli, which dealt with the topic of documentation and discussion on the remains of the fallen regimes (the works from the exhibition were part of a project Phantoms: Journeys After Relics of Dictatorships.

Philosopher and Photographer by Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden, which showed a selection of photographs taken by Ingarden in the years 1942-1970, and revealed an unfamiliar side of this renowned philosopher.

I was involved in academic activities going beyond the university walls – I took part in exhibition projects related to social memory and social justice:

– curatorial intervention My museum, a museum about me: or, who owns the heritage of the Polish countryside? Curatorial Dreams for the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. The project was undertaken as a part of the research project Thinking Through the Museum: Difficult Knowledge in Public, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

– the exhibition and academic event Matrix, which critically analysed the presence of women in the representation of the history of science.

Currently, I am a scholarship holder of The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA, STER Programme).

I also collaborate with Utopia Home – International Empathy Centre.