Tadeusz (Tadek) Wojtych

My PhD project compares conventional museums with their digital counterparts. I explore how online and offline museums differently narrate the past and how they shape their image as commemorative institutions more broadly. My preliminary results show that virtual museums open up commemoration to the voices and perspectives of previously marginalised actors (such as migrants, religious minorities, and political dissidents), who lack the resources to construct a brick-and-mortar museum or even to visit one. Importantly, however, the online and the offline spheres are not two separate worlds; instead, they are closely intertwined with one another. Many museums use online technologies, such as augmented reality guides, to shape (and sometimes manipulate) the visitors’ experiences of physical exhibitions. ‘Real-life’ political, social, and linguistic divisions persist online, and, much like the offline world, the web is divided into information bubbles. Therefore, instead of acting as the democratising gamechanger that it promised to be in the 1990s, the Internet often provides new ground and new tools for fighting old conflicts over history, memory and identity.

At Cambridge:

- Paper 18: European History since 1890 (supervisions)

- SLA3: Introduction to Russian Culture (supervisions)

- SL12: Soviet Russia, 1917-1991 (supervisions and one lecture)

At UCL SSEES:

- Utopia Denied: A History of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (tutorials and lectures)

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Space and narrative in Central and East European online and offline museums, ICCEES World Congress, Montreal, Concordia University, August 2021.

Methodology of online museum studies, Memory in the Russian and East European Context: Space, Text & Speech, University of Oxford, June 2021.

The creation of spatiality in Central European online museums, New Perspectives in Memory Studies, University of Cambridge, December 2019.

Physical and online commemoration in Central and Eastern Europe (1989-present), Politics of e-Heritage: Production and Regulation of Digital Memory in Eastern Europe and Russia, Marburg, Herder Institute, June 2019.

History textbook commissions and the portrayal of contested events in Germany, Poland and Russia (1972-present), BASEES Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, April 2019.

The reception of Soviet guitar poetry in Poland, BASEES Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, April 2018.

Joint textbook commissions in Central and Eastern Europe – a transnational approach, Discourses of Historical Education, Warsaw, SWPS University, September 2017.

Revolution without the proletariat. The beginnings of Russian Marxism [in Polish], 24th Polish Congress of History Students, Cracow, Jagiellonian University, April 2016.

Housewives at War: The influence of the Women’s Royal Naval Service on the position of women in British society during the Second World War [in Polish], 3rd National Conference of Naval and River History, University of Gdańsk, March 2015.

On Reproduction in the Age of Science and Technology: the impact of stereotypes on academia [in Polish], The Twentieth Century: The Age of Science and Technology, University of Gdańsk, October 2014.



CONFERENCES AND PANELS ORGANISED

International conference Memory, Commemoration, and Political Entanglements of Forced Migrations: 75 years of Operation Vistula (co-organiser), University of Cambridge, June 2022.

International conference Soviet Materialities (co-organiser), University of Cambridge, April 2022.

Panel Local actors, national perspectives and transnational contacts: heritage, museums and politics in Central and Eastern Europe (initiator and chair), ICCEES World Congress, Montreal, Concordia University, August 2021.

Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Working Group History and Memory in Eastern Europe (initiator and co-convener), a series of reading groups and invited lectures, funded by the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES), University of Cambridge, England, January-October 2018.

International summer school of the Institute for Transnational and Spatial History Interconnected – Actors, Objects and Ideas on the Move in Transnational & Global History (as Research Assistant), University of St Andrews, Scotland, 7-10 June 2015.

International conference Between Federalism, Autonomy and Centralism: Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th and 21st Centuries (as Conference Secretary), University of St Andrews, Scotland, 29 May 2015.