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- 2026-05-04
Barriers to organisational changes in Poland's public museums
Since the political and economic transformation of 1989, public museums in Poland have undergone change, which is particularly evidenced by high numbers of visitors, new premises, and award-winning exhibitions. Those developments, however, are not systemic, and furthermore, the introduction of change is far from consistent and encounters stern resistance. There is, moreover, a marked lack of knowledge concerning the reasons for this status quo. Therefore, to address this cognitive gap, the following research question was posed: what are the key barriers to organisational change in Poland's public museums? In order to answer it, the authors conducted a qualitative empirical study involving 27 interviews with top-level directors of Polish public museums. The results suggest that the main barriers to organisational change are internal, including low organisational culture and the absence of a clearly defined attitude to the visitor, as well as external barriers, particularly the lack of respect of the governing body for museum autonomy and lack of financial stability in the institutions governing them. - 2026-06-30
Media management education: terminological and definational challenges
This paper attempts to conceptualise media management (MM) education by confronting existing definitions of MM with the perspective of academic teaching staff from four selected Polish public universities offering education in this area within social communication and media studies. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 23 interviews with representatives of the authorities of media and communication studies units and academic staff specialising in MM. As a result, we identified MM’s major features (research areas, media-industry specificity, and processes), difficulties in defining MM (inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinarity, obsolescence, scientific and educational conditions), and difficulties in defining the teaching of MM (the area of education and the theoretical-practical approach). Our study contributes to the body of knowledge on academic education in MM. It is also the first step toward re-conceptualising MM education as a research subject. - 2025-12-30
Polscy internauci na temat hejtu
The article presents the results of the research conducted in March 2019 and November 2024 on the representative samples of Polish internet users over 15 years of age (N=815 in both surveys), devoted to their opinions on the hate speech phenomenon in internet: understanding the meaning of the term hate speech (hejt in Polish), motivations to criticize other internet users and to use the hate speech (hejtować in Polish), the groups using the most often hate speech (hejt) and the groups being the most often the victims of hate speech. The changes in time (between 2019 and 2024) are analysed in the article. About 90% of Polish internet users treat the hate speech as the serious social problem and supports fight against it. At the same time in opinion of three of four Polish internet users (74% in 2019 and 73% in 2024) fight against hate speech should not limit the freedom of speech. - 2026-06-30
Kapliczki przydrożne w świetle encykliki Laudato si’ i ekologii integralnej a ochrona lokalnego krajobrazu kulturowego
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The scientific purpose is identifying opportunity of referring ecological argumentation from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ to protection the landscape, in particular to roadside shrines. RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The research problem is the role of roadside shrines for the local communities and its meaning as an element of landscape and natural environment. The research method is media content analysis. PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The argument consists of three parts. The first part explores understanding of natural environment in encyclical Laudato si’. The second one treats about the roadside shrines as an element of landscape, and their social and cultural functions. Third part is devoted to the desecration of places of worship, including roadside shrines. Ten media relations about destroying roadside shrines from 2024 year are examined, the analysis cover the issues as language and narration, including reactions on the fact of different social actors. The aim of the analysis is the reconstruction od the perception of the functions of roadside shrines by the local communities. RESEARCH RESULTS: The article allows to put forward a thesis, that roadside shrines are perceived as an element of natural environment, that should be protected in the same way, as natural objects. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The conclusion from the article is necessity of popularisation of the knowledge about roadside shrines as element not only cultural heritage, but also natural environment, and taking institutional and educational actions that could improve protection of shrines against acts of their devastation. - 2026-07-17
A Within-Person Examination of the Family Stress Model: Family Income, Parental Distress, and Child Mental Health
The Family Stress Model (FSM) is a key framework explaining the relationship between family income and child mental health. However, most studies examining the FSM are cross-sectional and do not clearly distinguish within- from between-person effects, which limits robust inferences about how family income affects child mental health at the within-person level. This study addressed this gap by applying a Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model to data from the nationally representative UK Millennium Cohort Study, focusing on children aged 3, 5, 7, 11, and 14 (N = 11,845; ~49.9% female). Findings revealed that within-person decreases in family income were associated with subsequent increases in internalizing problems for boys from ages 3 to 5 and for girls from ages 7 to 11. Further, income was associated with externalizing problems indirectly but only among girls and only through maternal, not paternal, distress. Together, these findings suggest that within-person FSM processes operate in gender- and outcome-specific ways within families. Interventions may benefit from considering both child and parent gender, with maternal mental health as a particularly relevant target during economic hardship.
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- 2024-05-24
Psychologia społeczna. Wydanie drugie zaktualizowane
Nowa wersja podręcznika Psychologia społeczna ukazuje się w 14 lat po jego pierwszej edycji. Później było wiele wydań, bo podręcznik zyskał powszechne uznanie wykładowców i studentów. To wydanie jednak zasadniczo różni się od poprzednich. Współautorem został Tomasz Grzyb. W tomie przybyło wiele nowych fragmentów, niektóre kwestie zaktualizowano bądź opatrzono dodatkowymi komentarzami, odwołując się do świeżej literatury. Przede wszystkim zmienił się świat dookoła nas, pojawiły się nowe zjawiska, jak na przykład światowa pandemia COVID-19 i wraz z tym potrzeba odniesienia się do jej psychologicznych konsekwencji, a o wielu zjawiskach, którymi zajmuje się psychologia społeczna wiemy dziś więcej niż kilkanaście lat temu. Nie pozostało to bez wpływu na sam podręcznik – jego nowa, zmodyfikowana i przeredagowana treść lepiej oddaje charakter zmieniającej się, choć ciągle tak samo fascynującej dziedziny, jaką jest psychologia społeczna. Profesorowie Bogdan Wojciszke i Tomasz Grzyb, psychologowie o światowej renomie, napisali podręcznik do psychologii społecznej, jakiego jeszcze w Polsce nie było. Książka obejmuje wszystkie klasyczne zagadnienia składające się na tę dyscyplinę oraz zagadnienia relatywnie nowe, takie jak kwestie różnic płci, nowych mediów, społeczeństwa sieci, miłości i władzy. Napisana jasnym i barwnym językiem skupia się na prawidłowościach rządzących ludzką psychiką i postępowaniem. Pokazuje, w jak fascynujący sposób psychologia społeczna odpowiada na pytanie, kim jest człowiek i na czym polega jego społeczna natura. Wcześniejsze wydania tej książki stały się fundamentem dydaktyki akademickiej na kierunku psychologia. - 2024-01-22
Cross-Cultural Preferences for Women’s Waist to Hip Ratio and Men’s Shoulder to Hip Ratio: Data From Iran, Norway, Poland, and Russia
Objectives: Body size and shape are sexually dimorphic in humans, with men being characterized with larger upper bodies, while women typically having broader pelvises. Such sexually dimorphic traits, quantified as shoulder to hip ratio (SHR) in men and waist to hip ratio (WHR) in women, serve as cues of an individual’s genetic fitness, reproductive potential, health, and resource holding power, and, thereby, functioning as attractiveness cues to the opposite sex. Methods: In the current study, we investigated men’s and women’s preference for the opposite sex body shape (WHR in women and SHR in men) in samples from Iran, Norway, Poland, and Russia. Women rated their preference for men’s SHR (1.20 to 1.50) and men rated their preference for women’s WHR (0.55 − 0.85). Results and Conclusion: Our results showed that Iranian and Norwegian men preferred less feminine WHRs in women compared to Polish and Russian men. Moreover, Iranian women preferred less masculine SHRs in men than women from other countries. Altogether, the current research showed that there are variations in men’s preferences for women’s WHR and women’s preferences for men’s SHR among these countries. - 2025-08-11
What Puppygirls Know? The (in)Human Pedagogy of a Trans Feminine Style
‘Puppygirls’ is a name for a particular kinky trans feminine lesbian style, rooted in the long history of trans erotic productions, and currently thriving on social media platforms, such as Twitter (now X), Bluesky, or Discord. In this article, I provide an analysis of the style that is rooted in personal immersion in ‘puppygirl culture’. Using several examples of puppygirl media productions, I argue for the possibility of reading the puppygirl style as a critical practice: one that hints at ways of being trans that do rely on the ciscentric understanding of ‘the human’ as their point of reference. In doing so, I show how puppygirl style resonates with theoretical interventions in the field of trans studies offered by scholars such as Susan Stryker and Talia Mae Bettcher. - 2025-04-17
"Sarmatyzm". Historia pojęcia
The aim of my dissertation was to create a synthetic narrative about the history of “Sarmatism” (understood both as a word and as an idea) and to demonstrate the most important continuities and fractures within set history. I sought answers for the following questions: what was the role of “Sarmatism” in historical discourses? How was “Sarmatism” understood and what ideas did this word describe? What are the similarities and differences between individual discourses that use “Sarmatism”? Which elements of its semantic field have been the most persistent? Who and why has talked about “Sarmatism”? To what extent is “Sarmatism” a fundamental idea of the modern notion of the Polish identity? I was chiefly inspired by two methodological approaches – the history of ideas (particularly Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte and Cambridge school’s methods) and the critical discourse analysis (CDA). T he first chapter can be viewed as a follow-up to the introduction – it is the most comprehensive part of all. I demonstrated selected discursive modes of shaping the identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s ruling class. I argue that these modes were rooted mainly in the Renaissance humanist distinction between the barbaric North and civilized South. By showcasing particular texts representing different time periods, I aimed to underline the longevity of some early modern narratives about the Poles’ and Lithuanians’ shared barbaricum, construed to delineate the civilizational borders according to then current political needs. This brief overview was crucial for the dissertation, as it illustrates how the local identity discourse functioned before the political crisis of the Commonwealth, which occurred at the time when the cultural center of Europe was being narratively relocated from the South to the West. I considered the emergence of “Sarmatism” to be a result of this relocation, because of which a part of Polish elite internalized the Western narrative about Polish culture being incongruent and backward in relation to the West. T he second chapter concerns the initial phase of functioning of the “Sarmatism” in the Polish language, which occurred roughly during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. I analyzed, among others, the king’s diaries, various articles from “Monitor” and comedies of Franciszek Bohomolec, Józef Bielawski and Franciszek Zabłocki. The political conditions that mandated the emergence of “Sarmatism” in the discourse of the king’s party were outlined, along with the relationship between the word itself and the plan of national reforms postulated by the enlightened court. I demonstrated different modes of the historical uses of “Sarmatism” – especially the ironical and the non-ironical ones – by which I proved that the word was probably not used commonly because of its considerable emotional and axiological charge. Moreover, I indicated that the initial meaning of “Sarmatism” was substantially different from the contemporary ones, as it was mainly used to describe the political and cultural reality of the 18th century, not the whole culture of the early modern Commonwealth’s nobility. T he third chapter tackles the history of “Sarmatism” in the 19th century, and the source material for the analysis consists of literary works (e.g. by Cyprian Godebski, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, and Henryk Rzewuski), excerpts from press and academic texts, and definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias. Until recently, the 19th century was viewed (and, to an extent, rightly so) as a period when “Sarmatism” was not among the most important ideas organizing the Polish national thought. However – perhaps due to the relatively low frequency of its use – this was also precisely the moment when the word gained a myriad of new meanings, among them the first positive ones. I showed how the term, intentionally rejected by the generation of the Kościuszko Uprising, gradually reappeared in language in a variety of discourses, especially in Polish historiography. The chapter ends with a subsection devoted to the analysis of “Sarmatism” as a lexeme, which illustrates the changes of its meaning as they occurred between the formulation of Samuel Bogumił Linde’s definition at the beginning of the century and the brief encyclopedic description produced by Zygmunt Gloger about a hundred years later. T he fourth chapter is an analysis of texts from the interwar period. I researched predominantly the political and academic discourses, in which “Sarmatism” was starting to play an increasingly more important role. It was then that the term was established as a label commonly applied in the humanities to describe major historical processes; that said, it was used chiefly by scholars of the history of literature (in this context I concentrated on the works of Ignacy Chrzanowski and Aleksander Brückner). At the time, “Sarmatism” was still not well-defined, while it maintained a strong and predominantly pejorative axiological charge. As I concluded, this valuation resulted from the widespread need to accentuate the interwar Poland’s modernity, expressed in the press of the era. “Sarmatism” began to epitomize “Polishness” as a feature that distinguished Poland negatively from other European nations (in the view of both liberals, like Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, and conservatives, like Roman Rybarski). Sometimes, however, it referred to genuine local culture, perceived as a quality that had to be defended from foreign elements (labeled, for example, as “Semitism” or “Germanism”). T he fifth chapter focuses on the period between the end of the WW2 and the end of the 20th century. I decided to limit the analyzed material to academic texts debating the definition of “Sarmatism”, because this is the context in which the most crucial semantic changes influencing the contemporary understanding of this term took place. My aim was to demonstrate how this process was affected on one hand by the political conditions (Stalinism, the “nationalization” of history during Gomułka’s regime, and the fall of communism) and on the other by various philosophical notions (Marxism, structuralism, and poststructuralism). The chronological organization of the 20th century’s thought on “Sarmatism” also allowed me to underline the most important interconnections between consecutive academic definitions. It also allowed me to indicate which of those approaches should be considered the most influential. T he conclusion is a short overview of contemporary political and academic takes on “Sarmatism”. I do not, however, offer any prognoses or meticulous analyses, while only indicating how today’s discourses about “Sarmatism” continue the traditional ways of understanding it.
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