Dr. Maria Buko

Education 

2022 | PhD, social sciences

Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw

Dissertation title: "Memory and experience of the descendants of Polish non-Jewish prisoners of Nazi concentration camps in the context of the politics of memory in Poland"

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Małgorzata Melchior, Prof. Dr. Piotr Laskowski

2016 | MA, history

Institute of History, University of Warsaw

Thesis title: "The first and second generation of victims of Stalinism. The fate of former female Fordon prisoners and their families"

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Jerzy Kochanowski

2013 | MA, sociology

Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw

Thesis title: "Women's memory of totalitarianism. Female prisoners of concentration camps, Stalinist prisons and gulags about their experiences"

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Jacek Kochanowski

2011 | BA, sociology

Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw

^{__________________}

Career stages

2017-2021 | Head of the Oral History Archive of the History Meeting House and KARTA Centre

History Meeting House, Warsaw, Poland

2016 - 2020 | Member of the research team and project administrator

Universität Siegen and University of Warsaw

Project Rooms for Manoeuvre in State Socialism: Between Adaptation and Experiment, BEETHOVEN 1, 2014/15/G/HS3/04344, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and National Science Centre. Project coordinators: Prof. Dr. Claudia Kraft, Prof. Dr. Jerzy Kochanowski

2015-2017 | Oral History Specialist, the Oral History Archive of the History Meeting House and KARTA Centre

History Meeting House, Warsaw, Poland

^{__________________}

Selected Conferences and Workshops

2023

9^th Future of Remembrance Forum. Roundtable title: "Polish Culture of Remembrance from the Perspective of Descendants of Former Politicaly Persecuted People From Poland". Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg, Germany.

 

Revisiting Oral History Archives in Poland and Germany, workshop. Roundtable title: "Changing the perspective: Oral History as Women’s History". Public History Department, Institute for History and Biography, FernUniversität in Hagen; Institute ofPhilosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences; Faculty of History, University of Warsaw.

 

Annual Conference on Holocaust Studies and/in Generational Perspectives. Presentation title: "Making sense of parents’ war story. The second generation of Polish survivors". Online & Newcastle University, United Kingdom.

2019

17^th Polish Sociological Congress. Presentation title: "Ethical and methodological challenges in research on the second generation — children of concentration camp prisoners". Wrocław, Poland.

 

International Forum of the Second and Third Generation. Moderator. Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Memorial, Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany.

 

International conference GFPS-Forum 2019. Presentation title: "Die zweite Generation — Erinnerung, Erfahrung und Identität von Kindern der polnischen Konzentrationslagerhäftlinge". Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.

2018

Member of the historico-political education workshop group in the project "Descendants of Victims of Nazi Persecution“. Bundesverband Information & Beratung für NS-Verfolgte e.V., Cologne, Germany.

 

Co-organiser of the national conference: 3^rd Scientific Conference in the series "Interdisciplinary Views on Society“. Presentation title: "Second generation — memory, identity and experience of children of concentration camp prisoners from Poland". Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw, Poland.

Memberships 

Polish Oral History Association

Selected Publications

Monographs:

• Buko, Maria. Pogłosy. Dzieci więźniów niemieckich obozów koncentracyjnych [Echoes/Post-voices. Children of prisoners ofGerman concentration camps]. Warszawa: Dom Spotkań z Historią, 2020.
• Borodziej, Włodzimierz, Buko, Maria, Utz, Raphael, Zakrzewska, Zofia (eds.), Od zgonu ojca narodów do śmierci orła Karpat. Księga na sześćdziesiąte urodziny Jerzego Kochanowskiego [Vom Tod des Vaters der Völker bis zum Ende des Adlers der Karpathen. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Jerzy Kochanowski], Warszawa: Scholar, 2020.
• Buko, Maria, Katarzyna Madoń-Mitzner, Magda Szymańska, eds. Przetrwałam. Doświadczenia kobiet więzionych w czasach nazizmu i stalinizmu [I Survived. Experiences of women imprisoned under Nazism and Stalinism]. Warszawa: Dom Spotkań z Historią, 2017.

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

• Buko, Maria. "»I am a victim of war, too« — research on the descendants of the Polish political prisoners of Nazi concentration camps conducted in Poland", Psychologie & Gesellschaftskritik 47 (1/2) (2023): 159-183. 
• Buko, Maria. "Elżbieta Kuta, »Teraz to wszystko mi się poukładało w jedną, logiczną całość«", Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej 11 (2021): 116–159. doi.org/10.26774/wrhm.302.
• Buko, Maria. "Female memories of the experience of totalitarian places of isolation", Acta Poloniae Historicae 118 (2018): 183-206.  https://doi.org/10.12775/APH.2018.118.07.
• Buko, Maria, "Tożsamość represjonowana - prywatność jako przestrzeń wolności Sybiraków w okresie PRL", Przegląd Historyczny 109 (4) (2018): 769-788.

Book chapters:

• Buko, Maria. "Repressed Personality — Privacy as a Room for Manoeuvre of Sybiraks in the Polish People’s Republic". In: Room for Manoeuvre. Another Look at Negotiating Processes in the Socialist Bloc, ed. Jerzy Kochanowski, Claudia Kraft, 231-254. Goettingen: V&R Unipress, 2021.
• Buko, Maria. "Biographies publicised and concealed – different fates of families repressed under the Stalinism. A case study".In: Histories (Un)Spoken: Strategies of Survival and Social- Professional Integration in Political Prisoners' Families in Communist Central and Eastern Europe in the '50s and ‘60s, ed. Cosmin Budeanca, Dalia Bathory, 31-47. Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2018.
• Buko, Maria, "»Я выжила« – память и опыт полек, переживших войну". In: Сборник докладов 15-х чтений памяти Вениамина Иофе "Право на имя: Биографика 20 века" (20-22 апреля 2017), ed. Tatiana Pritykina, Elena Rusakova, 52-60. Petersburg: Research and Information Centre Memorial, Instytut Polski w Petersburgu, 2017.

Orphans of postwar Europe. Experience of child survivors of violence and development of care expertise and welfare institutions in Poland and Switzerland since 1944

Maria Buko’s postdoctoral project in the context of the Chair of Eastern European History’s strategic programme ‘Violence in East and West: Towards an Integrated History of the 20th Century Europe’ traces the history of parentally deprived children in postwar Europe, accounting for the history of care expertise and welfare institutions which developed around them. Drawing on the history of transnational exchanges of the late 1940s, the study develops an original comparative perspective bringing together the history of Poland and Switzerland, an emerging socialist state and a capitalist welfare state. As a result, the project intends to develop an original and integrated perspective on the history of orphaned children in the postwar period — those who went through war violence, as well as those who experienced physical, mental and symbolic violence in the medico-pedagogical context of the childcare institutions.

The study seeks to broaden the historical perspective on the postwar violence against children in Europe in the context of the transnational exchange of expertise, by identifying the following levels: 1. Individual experiences and emotions of children who survived war violence and violence in care institutions, 2. Reformulated theories in psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, social work, and education towards youngsters, 3. Emerging new institutions and legal regulations on both national and transnational levels.

Aspects of violence that are explored within the project are: war violence, domestic violence, institutional violence in welfare and educational institutions, symbolic violence.

Memberships 

• Polish Oral History Association (PTHM)
• Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
• ‘Transformation of Welfare’ working group – Slow Memory COST Action CA20105
• Polish Sociological Association (PTS)

Grants

(2018/2019) GFPS Scholarship holder at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Awards

(2014) Distinction in Jan Józef Lipski Master Thesis Competition (with prize money) 

(2020) publication of the book co-funded by the 'Literature' Programme of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage 

(2024) FNP MONOGRAPHS award (with prize money)