Dr Elżbieta Olzacka

Elżbieta Olzacka is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations, Jagiellonian University. She has received Master’s degrees in Sociology (2007) and Russian Studies (2011), and a Ph.D. in Sociology (2014). In 2018, she was a Visiting Scholar at The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs (George Washington University). Her interests include theories of war and conflict in sociological, anthropological, and cultural study perspectives. Several of her papers, as well as her book War and Culture. The Early Modern Military Revolution in Western Europe and Russia, has been devoted to the cultural processes accompanying the historical and contemporary wars. Her current research is on the dynamics of national identity and collective memory construction in the context of conflict. In 2014-2016, she conducted a research project, financed by the Polish National Science Center, dedicated to the civil war in the Republic of Tajikistan. In 2018, she started a research project devoted to the process of shaping new national heroes and their representations in the public spaces of Ukrainian cities.