Newsletter Vol. 6, No. 3 JULY 2026
A Word From the President
One of the initiatives PIASA is particularly pleased to support this year is the project “Biography and Academic Imaginarium. The Polish Intellectual Diaspora in the Autobiographies of Scholar-Migrants (BRAINY),” funded by the National Science Centre (NCN) under the supervision of Prof. Kamil Łuczaj. Many PIASA members know first-hand the extraordinary value of autobiographical memoirs as historical sources. Scholars have relied on them to understand not only historical events but also the everyday experiences, hopes, anxieties, and aspirations of ordinary people. These memoirs exist because, more than a century ago, Polish sociologists such as Florian Znaniecki, Józef Chałasiński, and Ludwik Krzywicki recognized something profound: if we want to understand society, we must allow people to speak in their own voices.
The memoir competitions they organized became one of Poland’s most original contributions to the social sciences. They invited peasants, workers, the unemployed, young people, and emigrants – groups whose lives had rarely been preserved in written form – to tell their own stories. The resulting collections transformed not only Polish sociology but also the broader practice of qualitative research. The lesson these memoirs teach is that history is not created only through great political events or famous names. It is also built from individual lives – lives that often seem ordinary while they are being lived.
As I learned from Dr. Monika Jania-Szczechowiak, one of the scholars leading the project, BRAINY seeks to continue this tradition by inviting scholars who migrated from Poland between 1990 and 2025 to share their autobiographical accounts. Academic mobility has always been part of scholarly life, enabling the exchange of ideas across borders. Yet behind every academic CV lies a much richer story: decisions to leave, moments of uncertainty, intellectual discoveries, encounters with new cultures, experiences of belonging and displacement, and both success and disappointment. These stories rarely appear in our publications, yet they profoundly shape who we become as scholars. As Dr. Jania-Szczechowiak explained: “Every story is unique, and every biographical experience is unlike any other. Our hope is that these ‘new memoirs’ will continue the history of academic migration and that the experiences and reflections they preserve will help build an academic world free from prejudice and inequality.”
I encourage members of our community to consider participating in this initiative. We often spend our careers preserving the histories of others. Occasionally, we are also called upon to preserve our own.
Memoirs, written in Polish or English, should be submitted to the following e-mail addresses: kontakt@diasporaintelektualna.pl and monika.jania.szczechowiak@uni.lodz.pl until 31.10.2026.
Anna Müller President, PIASA
