Ewa Stańczyk is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History. She earned her PhD from the University of Manchester in 2010. Prior to her appointment at the UvA she was Thomas Brown Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin (2010-2013) and the EURIAS Junior Fellow at The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar (2014-2015).

Her current research interests lie in visual history, with a particular focus on comics and political cartoons. Her monograph Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland (Ohio State University Press, 2022) won the 2023 Charles Hatfield Book Prize and the BASEES George Blazyca Prize in East European Studies, and has been reviewed in European Comic Art, Journal of Popular Culture, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Slavonic and East European Review, Slavic Review, The Polish Review, ImageText, The Comics Grid, and International Journal of Comic Art Blog. Her new book Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland has been published with the University Press of Mississippi in the summer of 2024.  

She is a member of Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES) and a co-lead of research cluster Identity and Belonging.

Since 2023, she is the PI in the NWO Open Competition M grant "Soft" Antisemitism? Cartoons and the Decline of Democracy in Interwar Czechoslovakia (2023-2028).

Over the years, she has held numerous international research fellowships:

• Polonista Fellowship, Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) and University of Lodz (1 November 2022-30 June 2023)
• Advanced Academia Fellowship, Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia (1 April-30 June 2019)
• EHRI Fellowship, Jewish Museum Prague (July 2018)
• Visiting Fellowship, Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, University of Leipzig (1-31 August 2017)
• Josef Dobrovský Fellowship, Insitute for Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague (1-30 June 2017)
• Research Fellowship, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (1 October 2016 - 31 August 2017) *declined
• Leibniz Summer Fellowship, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (1 May - 30 June 2016)
• Herder Scholarship, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg (1 March - 30 April 2016)
• EURIAS Junior Fellowship, The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (1 September 2014 – 30 June 2015)

Books

• Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland (Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2024), 271 pp.
• Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2022), 211 pp.
• Commemorating the Children of World War II in Poland: Combative Remembrance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 196 pp.

Special Issues

• The Surviving Thing: Personal Objects in the Aftermath of Violence (co-edited with Zuzanna Dziuban). Special issue of Journal of Material Culture 25/4 (2020).
• Beyond Maus: Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust (guest editor). Special issue of Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17/1 (2018).
• Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust (special issue reprint) (London: Taylor and Francis, 2018).

Journal Articles

• "Surviving Art from Terezín: The Satirical Drawings of Pavel Fantl", Holocaust and Genocide Studies 36/1 (2022): 3-18.
• "Polish Refugee Children in India: Personal Memory, Grassroots Activism, and Transnational Commemorative Diplomacy", Jeunesse 13/2 (2021): 38-54.
• "Szaber in post-war Poland: satirising plunder in Polish magazine cartoons (1945-1946)", Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 12/5 (2021): 857-872.
• "The Surviving Thing: Personal Objects in the Aftermath of Violence (Introduction)" (with Zuzanna Dziuban), Journal of Material Culture 25/4 (2020): 381-390.
• "Introduction", Beyond Maus: Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17/1 (2018): 1-7.
• "De-Judaizing the Shoah in Polish Comic Books", Beyond Maus: Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17/1 (2018): 36-50.
• "Exilic Childhood in Very Foreign Lands: The Memoirs of Polish Refugees in World War II", Journal of War and Culture Studies 11/2 (2018): 136-149.
• "The Rebelling Orphan: Adopting the Found Photograph", Feminist Media Studies 18/6 (2018): 1040-1054.
• "Cartoon Characters, Equality Nurseries and Children's 'Best Interests': On Childhood and Sexuality in Poland", Sexualities 21/5-6 (2018): 809-824.
• "Between Affect and Authenticity: Disobedient Photographs" (Critical Discussion Forum: The Afterlife of Photographs), Slavic Review 76/1 (2017): 63-71.
• “Transnational, Transborder, Antinational? The Memory of Jewish Past in Poland”, Nationalities Papers 44/3 (2016): 416-429.
• “Recycling the Orphan Photograph: The New Life of Jewish Objects”, Visual Studies 31/1 (2016): 63-76.
• “Heroes, Victims, Role Models: Representing the Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising”, Slavic Review 74/4 (2015): 738-759.
• “Women Cross Borders: Economic Migration in Contemporary Italian and Polish Comic Books” (with Paolino Nappi), Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 6/3 (2015): 230-245.
• “The Absent Jewish Child: Photography and Holocaust Commemoration in Poland”, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 13/3 (2014): 360-380.
• “Commemorating Young Victims of World War II: the Forgotten Children’s Camp in Litzmannstadt/Łódź”, East European Politics and Societies 28/3 (2014): 614-638.
• “’Long Live Poland!’: Representing the Past in Polish Comic Books”, Modern Language Review 109/1 (2014): 186-206.
• “Remaking National Identity: Two Contested Monuments in Post-Communist Poland”, Central Europe 11/2 (2013): 126-41.
• “Caught between Germany and Russia: Memory and National Identity in Poland’s Right-Wing Media post-2004”, Slavonic and East European Review 91/2 (2013): 289-316.
• “Polish Contact Zones: Silesia in Works of Adam Zagajewski and Tomasz Różycki”, Slovo 21.2 (2009): 50–63.
• „Ukraine and Kresy in Tomasz Różycki's Dwanaście stacji: A Postcolonial Analysis”, Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich 52/1-2 (2009): 93-109.
• “W poszukiwaniu ekfrastycznego przejścia. Ikona w Wierszach miłosnych Jerzego Harasymowicza”, Ruch Literacki 50/3 (2009): 263–282.
• “The Knight and the Lady: Performing Gender Identity in Wiersze miłosne by Jerzy Harasymowicz”, Studies in Slavic Cultures VII (2008): 50–63.

Book Chapters

• "Women, Feminism and Polish Comic Books: Frąś/Hagedorn’s Totalnie nie nostalgia (2017)", Comics of the New Europe. Reflections and Intersections, Martha Kuhlman and Jose Alaniz, eds. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020), 201-213.
• "Poland's Culture of Commemoration", in Poland's Memory Wars: Essays on Illiberalism, Jo Harper, ed. (Budapest: CEU Press, 2018), 160-169.
• “Between Personal and Collective Memory: History and Politics in Polish Comics”,  in Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918, Przemysław Czapliński, Joanna Niżyńska, and Tamara Trojanowska, eds. (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2018), 762-773.
• “Overcoming Otherness: Icons in the Poetry of Jerzy Harasymowicz”, in Displacement and Belonging in the Contemporary World, Richard Ganis, ed. (Salford: European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford, 2008), 53–65.
• „Płeć – podróż – przestrzeń. O performatywności tożsamości płciowej w Wierszach miłosnych Jerzego Harasymowicza”, in Lektury płci. Polskie (kon)teksty, Mieczysław Dąbrowski, ed. (Warszawa: Elipsa, 2008), 279-288.
• „Ukraiński Inny w Lichtarzu ruskim Jerzego Harasymowicza jako przykład dyskursu kolonialnego”, in Literatura polska w świecie. W kręgu znawców, Romuald Cudak, ed. (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Gnome, 2007), 67–74.

Recent book reviews

• Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial by Agata Fijalkowski, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 66/3-4 (2024): 625-626.
• But I live: three stories of child survivors of the Holocaust, edited by Charlotte Schallié, illustrated by Miriam Libicki, Gilad Seliktar, and Barbara Yelin, Canadian Slavonic Papers 65/ 1 (2023): 133-134.
• Polish Migrants in European Film 1918-2017 by Kris van Hueckelom, Studies in European Cinema 19/4 (2022): 449-450.
• The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry: Performance and Recording after World War II by Aleksandra Kremer, Slavonic and East European Review 100/3 (2022): 549-551.
• The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland by Andrew Kornbluth, Journal of Contemporary History 57/2 (2022): 507-509.
• Syberiada Żydów polskich. Losy uchodźców z Zagłady by Lidia Zessin-Jurek and Katharina Friedla (eds), Jewish History and Culture 22/2 (2021): 184-186. 
• Yellow star, red star: Holocaust remembrance after Communism by Jelena Subotic, European Review of History 28/4 (2021): 610-611.
• Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe: The Ghosts of Others by Uilleam Blacker, Slavic Review 80/2 (2021): 416-417.
• Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890–1930 by Dana Mihăilescu, Shofar 38/3 (2020): 314-316. 
• Arnošt Frischer and the Jewish politics of early 20th-century Europe by Jan Láníček, East European Jewish Affairs 49/2 (2019): 174-175.