MSI Student wins the “Young Researcher” competition
Ms. Laura Czyż, a student of Polish Studies and International Relations at the UWr College for Interdisciplinary Studies has received a grant in the “Young Researcher” competition to carry out a project at an international research institution.
In the summer of 2026, Ms Laura Czyż will undertake an internship at the Ravensbrück Memorial – Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, administered and operated by the Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten.
The research will be conducted in close contact with tangible traces left by the prisoners—letters, documents, and personal belongings that have survived as fragile carriers of camp experience, traces of individual biographies, and a moving example of practising memory under conditions of extreme deprivation and violence.
At the same time, accounts by women describing experiences leading up to the evacuation of the Ravensbrück camp in 1945 and those following its abandonment will be analysed, when some prisoners were rescued during the humanitarian rescue operation known as the “White Buses”.
Ms. Laura Czyż focuses her research on the female experience of war. She analyses accounts of female prisoners from German Nazi concentration camps preserved in witness testimony records collected in 1945 in Sweden by the team led by dr Zygmunt Łakociński. hese sources constitute some of the earliest testimonies of women’s experiences, who survived the camps. She is preparing her master’s thesis under the guidance of her tutor and supervisor – prof. dr hab. Piotr Chruszczewski. The outcome of the research will be a scholarly publication, scheduled for release in March 2027.
Ms. Laura Czyż’s research interests include women’s experiences of armed conflicts in other regions of the world, particularly in Arab countries. The realisation of the research project in Ravensbrück will be an important stage in the development of these studies and will help deepen knowledge about the testimonies of women who experienced the violence of totalitarian systems and chose to bear witness.
Read the full report on the College website. Warm congratulations!
Translated by Oleksandra Humeniuk (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
Date of publication: 19.03.2026
Added by: EJK
