Agata Kowalewska
A philosopher and artist by training, I use transdisciplinary research, art, and storytelling to engage with spaces of human-nonhuman conflict and nonhuman cultures.
I am an assistant professor at the Department of Performativity Studies, Jagiellonian University, where I run a project A transdisciplinary approach to studying and conceptualising nonhuman cultures within the humanities and social sciences, funded by the National Science Centre (2024-2027). I am also in the last year of my other NCN-funded project, “Feralizing” as an alternative to “rewilding” in environmental humanities and Anthropocene studies, which I run at the University of Warsaw.
Often working in collaborations across disciplines, I have written on ferality and feralizing as an alternative to rewilding, ecological aesthetics of (counter)catastrophe, sea fire (toxic glowing dinoflagellates thriving in the dying Baltic), urban wild boars, porcine sex and the politics of purity, hybrid beaver cultures, and bark beetles and why we should let some trees die.
CV
education
2023 // PhD in Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Thesis: Towards an ecological aesthetics of (counter)catastrophe: An analysis of selected works of contemporary Polish art;
2013 // Philosophy MA, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw (Film theory in the Frankfurt School);
2010 // Fine Art BA (Honours) in Fine Art Media, Bath School of Art & Design, Bath;
2007 // Art and Design Foundation, Byam Shaw at Central Saint Martins, London.
experience
since 2024 // Assistant Professor, Department of Performativity Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow;
2025 // Two-month fellowship at the Sydney Environment Institute;
2024-2027 // Principal Investigator in the National Science Centre Sonatina research grant A transdisciplinary approach to studying and conceptualising nonhuman cultures within the humanities and social sciences;
2021-2025 // Principal Investigator in the National Science Centre Preludium research grant “Feralizing” as an alternative to “rewilding” in environmental humanities and Anthropocene studies;
2024 // Animal Studies Summer Institute, University of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois;
2022 // Three-month fellowship at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz hosted by Anna Tsing and Andrew Mathews;
2022 // Co-organiser and co-curator of the #Feralizing edition of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin’s project New Alphabet School in Warsaw;
2020 // Visiting Predoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (1.06-31.12);
2016 // Completed 1st year of the PhD course at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths (Tomorrow in a year. The politics of Ips typographus in the Białowieża Forest);
2013-2015 // Lecturer at the Academy of National Defence, University of Warsaw, and University of Warsaw’s Open University;
other scholarships and grants
2020-2021 // The Etiuda 8 Scholarship for individual project Nature in Polish visual arts in the years 2000-2020 – a philosophical analysis and a 3-month fellowship at UC Santa Cruz (2022). National Science Centre;
2021 // Co-investigator in JPICH Heritage in Changing Environments Program, Horizon 2020, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. PI: Monika Bakke. Title: Extinction as cultural heritage? Exhibiting human-nature entanglements with extinct and threatened species. Registration number: 017/DSAP-JG/2019;
2020 // Mikrogrant, University of Warsaw;
2018-2019 // Principal Investigator of microgrant Land Art and The Posthumanist Turn in Aesthetics. University of Warsaw DSM 117900/14;
2015-2016 // Principal Investigator of microgrant Aesthetics of hybrid bodies University of Warsaw;
2014-2016, 2020-2022 // Scholarship for best PhD candidates, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw;
2018 // Bursary award from a-n The Artists Information Company and Warsaw University for an artistic research project on Svalbard Of Ice and Sky;
2018 // Residency @ Roja Art Lab, supported by the State Culture Capital Fund of Latvia and Warsaw University;
2018 // The Hive project commission, supported by the Luton Arts Fund;
2014-2015 // Participant in POKL 04.01.03-00-002/11 educational grant, European Commission;
2012 // Participant in “Work, Class, Gender” research project funded by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
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