Agnieszka Zgrzywa

Agnieszka Zgrzywa completed her studies and earned her PhD at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where she was affiliated with the Department of Historical Poetics and the Department of 20th-Century Literature, Literary Theory and the Art of Translation. During this period, she also taught courses in the history of Polish literature within the Slavic Studies programme at Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, and pursued studies in cultural anthropology at the University of Göttingen.

Since 2008, she has been affiliated with the Collegium Polonicum, initially with the programme Polish as a Foreign Language and currently with Poland Studies. Her teaching includes, among others, the history of Polish literature of the interwar period and translation studies.

She represents a Renaissance-style humanistic approach, dividing her professional activity between two equally important passions: scholarly research and artistic practice. She is the author of books devoted to Polish poets: Stanisław Grochowiak (Rebis, Poznań 2000; published under the name Agnieszka Dworniczak) and The Poet and the Fairy Tale: On Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński (Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań 2010). Among her other publications is the essay ,,Medizin als mythosschaffendes Material in den Erzählungen von Bruno Schulz” (in Literatur und Medizin, vol. XIII, 2022; co-authored with Antoni Bońkowski, PhD).

She has published scholarly articles in academic journals and conference volumes on the role of emotions in foreign language teaching and on an original teaching methodology she terms gelotodidactics (learning through humour, laughter, and positive emotions, aimed at reducing stress). She is also the editor of Recepty Starego Doktora (The Old Doctor’s Prescriptions), a selection of educational recommendations by Janusz Korczak (PWN, Warsaw 2022).

Drawing on her practical experience in translation studies, she has co-authored Polish translations of two contemporary Russian plays - Me & the Kalashnikov Man by Yuri Klavdiev and Gupik by Vasily Sigarev - as well as a Russian translation of Andrzej Bursa’s poetry volume Bursa Aktualny (Wydawnictwo Rys, 2025). For three seasons, she managed the impresario work of the foreign-student theatre group Słubice Wschodnie.

She has also released the album To wszystko bierzemy. Songs of Element of Crime (available on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube), featuring her own Polish translations of lyrics by German singer-songwriter Sven Regener.

At the Collegium Polonicum, she has initiated and curated numerous projects carried out in cooperation with students, as well as interdisciplinary exhibitions combining literature with visual arts, audio recordings, and spatial artistic arrangements. These include, among others: Pan Tadeusz in the Languages of the World; Janusz Korczak, Children and Toys; Tuwim’s Birthday; My Love Is Not the One. Homoerotic Poetry of the Russian Silver Age; Russia of the Émigrés; The Rhythm of Leśmian; Olga Tokarczuk’s Aphorisms: Quilts; Sigarev’s ,,Gupik” Interpreted by Xenia Torskaya; Kleist’s Letters: The World in Boxes; Herbert Inspiring; Afront. Andrzej Bursa - Polish-Russian Works; and Time: Phraseology and Imagination.

All of her academic and artistic activities are united by a sustained interest in emotionality and individual human experience.