Marianna Szczygielska

Marianna Szczygielska is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences where she works on the BOAR project. She is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Department III: Artifacts, Action, Knowledge. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Gender Studies from the Central European University. A feminist researcher, Marianna brings queer and decolonial approaches into reflection on human-animal relations. With a background in philosophy and gender studies, her research interests include environmental humanities, queer theory, critical race studies, history of science, feminist science and technology studies. Marianna has recently joined the new editorial team of Humanimalia journal.

Common to Marianna’s research projects is an interest in the material aspects of knowledge circulation within the institutional network of veterinary laboratories, breeding stations, zoos, and museums. The primary site of her research has been the zoological garden in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work explores how the traffic in animal bodies and scientific ideas has shaped the practices of natural history collecting and wildlife conservation. Drawing from interdisciplinary methodology, Marianna analyzes the cultural, social, and political aspects of life sciences with a focus on animal husbandry, veterinary and taxonomic research, genetics, and the study of animal behavior.

Education
2017 | PhD in Comparative Gender Studies, Central European University in Budapest, Hungary
2010 | MA in Gender Studies, Central European University in Budapest, Hungary
2009 | MA in Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles 

• 2024 | ‘War on Extinction: Wildlife as Statecraft in Interwar Poland.’ Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 54 no. 2 (April 2024): 244-267.
• 2023 | ‘The many boar identities: understanding difference and change in the geographies of European wild boar management.’ Journal of Environmental Planning and Management (November 2023): 1-23. Co-authored with Erica von Essen, Kieran O’Mahony, Thorsten Gieser, Virginie Vaté, Aníbal Arregui & Ludek Broz.
• 2023 | ‘Tracing Viral Trajectories. Epistemic and Bodily Reservoirs in Interspecies Health.’ History and Technology (September 2023):1-17. Co-authored with Agata Kowalewska.
• 2023 | ‘Reading Teeth: Ivory as an Artifact of Classed Whiteness.’ Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 53 (3): 308–331.
• 2023 | ‘Evolution of European bison image and its implications for current species conservation.’ PLOS ONE 18(1): 1-18. Co-authored with Tomasz Samojlik, Piotr Daszkiewicz, Anastasia Fedotova, Aurika Ričkienė, and Olga Cielemęcka. 
• 2022 | ‘Animal Sex in Public: Warping Time and Sexuality in the Zoo.’ Environmental Humanities 14(3): 641–660.
• 2022 | ‘Undoing extinction. The role of zoos in breeding back the tarpan wild horse, 1922–1945.’ Centaurus – Journal of the European Society for the History of Science 64(3): 729-750.
• 2021 | ‘Guarding the “Balkan Route” on the postsocialist frontier: revisiting Maja Weiss’ Varuh meje (2002).’ Co-authored with Catherine Baker & Špela Drnovšek Zorko. International Feminist Journal of Politics 23(5): 811-828.
• 2021 | ‘Od kości słoniowej do plastiku, czyli nienaturalna historia wymierania.’ Kultura Współczesna 113 (1): 28-42.  special issue: ‘Muzeum antropocenu.’ (‘From ivory to plastic, or the unnatural history of extinction’).
• 2020 | ‘Elephant Empire: Zoos and Colonial Encounters in Eastern Europe.’ Cultural Studies 34(5): 789–810. special issue: Empire Off-Center: Memory, Nature, Performance and Affect as Imperial Cultural Formations.

• 2017 | ‘Jedząc kebaba… Zwierzęta i zwierzęcość a islamofobia.’ Praktyka Teoretyczna 26(4): 238-248. (‘Eating a kebab… Animals/Animality and Islamophobia’)
• 2017 | ‘Hyenas and Hormones: Transpecies Encounters and the Traffic in HumAnimals.’ Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 22(2): 61-84.
• 2015 | ‘Posthumanizm: dzień po rewolucji,’ Czas Kultury 184(1): 140-147. (‘Posthumanism: A Day After the Revolution’).
• 2013 | ‘Transbiological Re-imaginings of the Modern Self and the Nonhuman: Zoo Animals as Transbiological Entities.’ Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture 10(2): 101-110.

Peer-reviewed chapters in edited volumes 

• 2024 | ‘Textured Taxidermy: The Strange Afterlives of Zoo Animals.’ In The Heart of a Giraffe is Twelve Kilos Lighter, eds. Hana Janečková and Michal Novotný (National Gallery Prague, 2024). [Czech Catalogue for the 60^th Venice Biennale]: 64-70.
• 2024 | ‘Lion Capital: Zoo Acquisition Strategies in Interwar Poland.’ In: Colonial Dimensions of the Global Wildlife Trade. eds. Claudia Andratschke, Charlotte Marlene Hoes, Annekathrin Krieger (Veröffentlichungen des Netzwerks Provenienzforschung in Niedersachsen, 2024): 130-146.
• 2023 | ‘Naïve Boars and Dummy Sows: Porcine Sex and the Politics of Purity.’ In Feminist Animal and Multispecies Studies: Critical Perspectives on Food and Eating. eds. Kadri Aavik, Kuura Irni, and Milla-Maria Joki (Brill Press, November 2023): 45-69. Co-authored with Agata Kowalewska.
• 2021 | ‘The Future of the Zoo: A New Cosmopolis’ / ‘Przyszłość zoo. Nowa kosmopolis.’ In Refugia: The Survival of Urban Transspecies Communities / Refugia. (Prze)trwanie transgatunkowych wspólnot miejskich, ed. Monika Bakke. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 178-204. (bilingual publication)
• 2019 | ‘Good Change’ and Better Activism: Feminist Responses to Backsliding Gender Policies
  in Poland. In Gendering Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe. A Comparative Agenda, eds. Andrea Krizsán and Conny Roggeband. Budapest: CEU Press, pp. 120-160.
• 2019 | Pandas and the Reproduction of Race and Sexuality in the Zoo. In Zoo Studies. A New Humanities, eds. Tracy McDonald, and Daniel Vandersommers. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 211-236.
• 2017 | Zoos. In Gender: Animals. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks, ed. Juno Salazar Parreñas. Farmington Hills: Macmillan Reference, pp. 247-262.

Edited volumes and special issues

• 2021 | Tranimacies: Intimate Links Between Animal and Trans* Studies. London: Routledge. Co-edited with Eliza Steinbock and Anthony Wagner. Solicited by the Routledge Special Issues as Book program.
• 2019 | ‘Plantarium: Human-Vegetal Ecologies.’ Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience 5(2): 1-12. Co-edited with Olga Cielemęcka.
• 2017 | ‘Thinking Linking.’ Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (special issue Tranimacies: Intimate Links between Affect, Animals, and Trans* Studies) 22(2):1-10. Co-edited with Eliza Steinbock and Anthony Wagner.
• 2013 | ‘The Conditions of Praxis: Theory and Practice in Activism and Academia.’ Graduate Journal of Social Science 10(3): 8-13. Co-edited with Maja Nitis and Whitney Stark.