Research Groups

The ASC houses several research groups, led by senior professors and drawing many graduate students and PhD candidates. Each has a specific line of research—American Leadership, Gender/Sexuality, Speculative Texts and Media, Development Dilemmas of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Brazilian Studies. Each research group organizes its own series of events, often open to the public, thus promoting their areas of interest. 

Gender/Sexuality Research Group

Head: dr hab. Karolina Krasuska

The group was formed in early 2016 in order to facilitate cooperation between doctoral and advanced MA students working, studying at, and affiliated with the American Studies Center. Under Dr. Karolina Krasuska’s tutelage, the group has organized a number of seminars devoted to different research methodologies and research practices within the field of American cultural studies. The topics covered during these seminars include disability studies, girlhood studies, hauntology, gender variance in Poland, gender and militarism, female wartime reporting, and queer desires in American speculative fiction. Since 2016 the group has invited such eminent scholars as Prof. Andrea Peto, Prof. Mary Ann Doane, and Prof. Jack Halberstam to deliver lectures and lead highly popular seminars. In spring 2022 the research group organized a student conference devoted to gender and sexuality in American studies.

Speculative Texts and Media Research Group

Head: dr hab. Paweł Frelik

The Speculative Texts and Media Research Group offers a forum for scholars and researchers interested in the broadly understood fantastic genres, such as science fiction, fantasy, and dystopia, as well as audiovisual media, including video games. What connects these diverse genres and media is their mode of speculation, which proposes to look at the world not in purely mimetic terms but through speculation, extrapolation, and futurism. Given the almost complete lack of long­term discussions in contemporary culture, the fantastic has been the only cultural site that has so systematically and comprehensively engaged the question of tomorrow. Gathering graduate students, scholars, and researchers from a range of disciplines interested in the above issues and questions, the Speculative Texts and Media Research Group organizes regular meetings, public lectures and seminars, and larger academic events

Weird Fictions Research Group

Head: dr Agnieszka Kotwasińska

Weird Fictions Research Group emerged in early 2020 out of the W.E.I.R.D. Students’ Reading Group which was established in 2018 at the American Studies Center, the University of Warsaw. Our research group invites students and early career researchers interested in all types of weird fictions. If you enjoy weird fiction, SF, horror, and fantasy, our research group is a place for you. Join our discussions, movie screenings, seminars, guest lectures, and special events. We meet twice every month. Our Fall 2018 schedule was devoted to questions of taste and paranoid reading, SF graphic novels, nostalgia and 80s animation. In the spring of 2019 we looked at cyber-punk and the posthuman. During Fall 2019 we discussed body horror in different cultural texts, while in Spring 2020 we talked about hybridity, monstrosity and transgression in SFF/horror/the weird.

Leadership Studies Research Group

Head: dr hab. Bohdan Szklarski

Presidents, prime ministers, commanders, CEOs, and cultural icons as leaders of people and organizations often become heroes of collective imagination. Who has not heard of Caesar, Washington, Roosevelt, Hitler, Martin Luther King, Michael Jordan, Bono, or Steve Jobs. Such personalities inspire followers, move crowds, control institutions, create innovations and become indispensable elements of public sphere. Today, in a globalized and anarchic world, leaders and leadership in all spheres of human interest, from politics to business and culture, have become a noteworthy research subject at almost all major universities. The Leadership Studies Research Group wishes to make a contribution to the understanding of modern world through such activities as (1) academic study of all aspects of leadership and building a community of researchers and students; (2) dissemination of knowledge about leaders and leadership among general public; (3) facilitation of collaborative endeavors with those who study and practice leadership. We invite everyone who shares our conviction that politics, business, art or sports are made by people who leave their mark on us.

Brazilian Studies Research Group

Head: dr Renata Siuda-Ambroziak (On leave)

The Brazilian Studies Research Group at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw was established with the endorsement of the Embassy of Brazil in Warsaw to create a forum for researchers from Poland and abroad dealing with broadly understood Brazilian Studies, including both humanities and social sciences. The focus of the research group is primarily on contemporary Brazil—its culture, society, politics and economy, as well as migration issues concerning the Polish presence in Brazil. The group’s research interests also include historical studies on Brazil and the Polish-Brazilian relations. The group welcomes anyone interested in Brazil who wants to deepen their knowledge of this country, participate in academic events devoted to it and in Brazil-oriented research projects. The group is affiliated with another one, Polish-Brazilian Research Group for Studies on the Polish Diaspora in Brazil, also headed by Dr. Siuda-Ambroziak. It was founded in January 2019 at the LEER Laboratory of the University of São Paulo in Brazil.