Anna Barcz

Dr Anna Barcz

Small Group Project 2021-22

Re-Indigenisation of Aquatic Cultures in Europe: Translating Rivers’ Voice

This project seeks to present human societies connectedness to rivers through a study of so-called translation of rivers’ voice. It assumes the possibility to reconstruct lost or mythical entanglement of human-river language by looking at re-indigenisation of selected European aquatic cultures of the major rivers and their tributaries as well as lost rivers (i.e. lost in the process of urban and industrial farming development). This multilingual entanglement of human-river voice can be recreated by researching past, endangered and ethnic minorities’ oral and literary traditions (i.e. poems, songbooks, folk/ethno-textual and music resources, e.g. expressed in Irish, Silesian, Kashubian, or Forest Nenets languages) – and how they can supplement and inspire the dominant Western and Eastern European colonial cultures.

More information

Areas of interest

Animal Studies Environmental Humanities Eastern Europe

Cohort

FG7

Biography

Anna Barcz holds a PhD in literary studies from the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. Before coming to Munich, she was appointed as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub (Trinity College Dublin). From 2012 to 2018 she has been associated with the Institute as a research fellow. Since 2015 she has been working as an assistant professor at the University of Bielsko-Biala and has been teaching at the University of Warsaw. Anna has been carrying out research in the field of animal studies and environmental humanities. Her project Socio-Cultural Constructions of Vulnerability and Resilience. German and Polish Perceptions of Threatening Aquatic Phenomena in Odra River Regions (CultCon, 2016-2018) was supported by the Polish and German Research Foundations and conducted in cooperation with The Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner. Polish and German literature played a major role in this project by reflecting how people cope with floods and in understanding better the cultural differences between Polish and German environmental performance. Anna’s recent research concentrates on representing non-humans in the environmental history and culture of Soviet Eastern Europe.

Biographical details correct as of 24.04.26