Prof. Dr. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir

Professional Background

Dr. Joanna Sabina Tokarska-Bakir is a professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies (ISNS) of the Polish Academy of Sciences at Warsaw University. She is a cultural and historical anthropologist and religious studies scholar whose research specializes in historical anthropology, ethnography of the Holocaust, “blood libel,” and postwar anti-Jewish violence in Poland. Dr. Tokarska-Bakir is the founder of The Ethnographic Archive, which aims to organize field expeditions to different parts of eastern Poland and to conduct ethnographic interviews regarding so-called blood libels and Polish Holocaust memory. Over 100 ISNS anthropology students, students from the Collegium Civitas Chair of Anthropology, and volunteers from other academic and research institutions have participated in the field expeditions.

Dr. Tokarska-Bakir has received fellowships from Heidelberg University, the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Princeton University, the European Commission, and the Imre Kertész Kolleg. She is the author of numerous publications, including the books Légendes du sang. Une anthropologie du préjugé antisémite en Europe’ ( 2015), Pogrom Cries. Essays on Polish-Jewish History‘, 1939-1946 (2017, 2019, 2nd ed.), Jewish Fugitives in the Polish Countryside. Beyond the German Holocaust Project (2021), and The Kielce Pogrom. A Social Portrait (2018), for which she was awarded the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Prize.

Fellowship Research

In her capacity as the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar-in-Residence for the 2023-2024 academic year, Dr. Joanna Sabina Tokarska-Bakir is undertaking a research project titled "Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Poland in the Aftermath of the Holocaust." The focus of her work lies in the continuation of her ethnographic research on the phenomenon of postwar violence against the Jewish community in Poland.

Residency Period: October 2, 2023–June 30, 2024