Dr hab. Agata Szubert, prof UWr passed away
On 7 June 2025, during a funeral ceremony at Osobowicki Cemetery, we bid farewell to dr hab. Agata Kowalska-Szubert, prof. UWr, our colleague and an outstanding Dutch studies scholar, a person deeply devoted to academic work and her students. Below, we commemorate her life and academic journey, now permanently recorded in the history of our Dutch studies community. She passed away unexpectedly on 27 May.
Agata Kowalska-Szubert (1968–2025) began her studies at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Wrocław, in 1986, initially choosing German philology, later specialising in Dutch studies. In 1991, she defended her master’s thesis under the supervision of prof. Stanisław Prędota and graduated with distinction. In the same year, she began working as an assistant at the Erasmus of Rotterdam Chair of Dutch Language, Literature, and Culture. Her academic research focused on phraseology. In 1996, she defended her doctoral dissertation, De kool en de geit. Nederlandse vaste verbindingen met een dier- of plantelement, under the supervision of Piet van Sterkenburg, honorary doctorate recipient of the University of Wrocław. The defence took place at Leiden University in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with professors Cor van Bree and Jos Wilmots also on the committee. Agata maintained lifelong professional and personal connections with them, including co-editing, together with Professor Wilken Engelbrecht, a commemorative volume of Roczniki Humanistyczne for Jos Wilmots on his 90th birthday in 2023.
From 1999 to 2005, she served as Deputy Head of the Chair of Dutch Studies. She coordinated student participation in language courses and study abroad programmes. Agata was tireless in organising a wide range of events for Dutch studies students from Poland and Central Europe. Her initiatives were numerous: she founded the Dutch Spelling Contest, which began as a small, faculty-level linguistic game and evolved into a nationwide, and later international, event. She typically authored the dictation texts herself, with humour, sensitivity, and meticulous attention to linguistic nuance.
Agata co-created and coordinated numerous international educational projects, including: Business & Language. Language & Business. Business Communication in Polish and Dutch, and the Erasmus Plus project Professional Accessible Community Interpreting: A Gateway to Migrant Integration (2018–2021). She also led the Erasmus Plus 2022 and 2024 projects, BIP Ondertitelen, which twice offered dozens of students from Central Europe the unique opportunity to translate Dutch-language film subtitles, later presented at special screenings at Kino Nowe Horyzonty.
Agata combined her passion for language and teaching with organisational work. She was a member of the International Association of Germanists (IVG) and active in the Comenius Association of Central European Dutch Studies (founded in 1995), serving in various board roles from 1997 and becoming Chair in 2021. She also represented Central European Dutch studies scholars on the board of the International Association for Dutch Studies (Internationale Vereniging voor Neerlandistiek) in The Hague, serving as Vice-Chair. In 2023, she was elected a member of the world’s oldest philological society, Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde in Leiden. As a member of the Polish Association of Dutch Studies (OPoN), she played a key role from 2016 in strengthening the Polish Dutch studies community. From 2020, she co-managed the Chair of Dutch Studies as Deputy Head for educational and student affairs.
Her professional life was not without challenges. Thanks to her abilities, strong self-confidence, and conviction in her chosen path, she overcame obstacles and consistently achieved her goals. Her habilitation, obtained in 2016 at Palacký University in Olomouc based on her dissertation Dutch Loanwords in Contemporary Polish, was supervised by distinguished professors Piet van Sterkenburg, Wilken Engelbrecht, and Kris Van Heuckelom. She maintained close collaboration with the university, including serving on the academic board for doctoral studies. In 2023, she was promoted to Professor at the University of Wrocław. She authored over 60 publications and served as reviewer and committee member in doctoral and habilitation procedures.
We have lost a distinguished professor of Dutch studies, a linguist, an outstanding organiser recognised by the international Dutch studies community, a valued colleague, and a lecturer loved by her students. She excelled in creating strong personal connections with students. Her diploma seminars were always fully attended. She supported students both academically and personally, appreciated every effort, and motivated them. Two master’s theses she supervised won international awards in 2024. One of her seminar groups gifted her a mug inscribed “Best Supervisor.” Because Agata truly was the best. Agata was a good person.
Irena Barbara Kalla, Bożena Czarnecka
