Ewa Kumelowski, Visiting Fellowship 2023/24

Biography

I am a historian of 20th Century Yugoslav cultural history whose research interests extend into expressions of everyday experiences of war, particularly amongst marginalized or otherwise overlooked populations, and the role of culture within armed conflict. I received a joint BA in political science from the Freie Univeristät Berlin and Sciences Po Paris, after which I completed my MA in history at the Doctoral School of Sciences Po Paris in 2018. I completed my PhD in 2022 as part of a cotutelle procedure between the Chair of Southeastern History at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the CETOBaC at the EHESS in Paris, examining the history of narrative production within the visual arts scene of besieged Sarajevo through a micro-historical perspective. Following my defense, I remained an associated researcher at the CETOBaC, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for East European Studies at the Freie Univeristät Berlin in the autumn of 2023. I am currently working with the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina to lead the “Sarajevo Under Siege: A Visual Art Archive” digitalization project, funded by the MEAP program of UCLA.

Visiting Fellowship June 2024

Motivation

My stay at the INZ in Ljubljana is motivated by the opportunity to develop my research on women’s experiences in the Yugoslav Partisan medical service into a long-term project. A one-month stay in Ljubljana will give me a unique chance to access to valuable primary materials held at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, as well as smaller institutions such as the Bolnica Franjo museum located in the nearby mountains. Beyond allowing me to integrate the particularities of Slovenian medical structures into my work, the fellowship program also offers the opportunity for exchange with colleagues at the INZ, both on local histories of the Second World War and on new developments in digital history methodologies. The goal of this fellowship is the preparation of an application for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship later this year.

List of publications (a selection)

KUMELOWSKI, Ewa Anna. Between art and object: reflections on the shifting character of the Greetings from Sarajevo postcard series, Sarajevo: Historical Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2024.

KUMELOWSKI, Ewa Anna. Sarajevo Ghetto Spectacle: An introduction to the history of the visual arts scene of besieged Sarajevo, Third Text 34, 2020, pp.350-368

KUMELOWSKI, Ewa Anna. Review of The Geopolitics of Memory. Journey to Bosnia by James Riding, Südosteuropa 68, 2020, pp.569-580