Agnieszka Helman-Ważny Appointed Professor of Social Sciences at Warsaw

23 February 2022

Photo: Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

The faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies at the University of Warsaw has appointed Agnieszka Helman-Ważny Research Professor of Social Sciences, with a focus on Book and Media History.

Despite the new role, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny will continue to work at CSMC and the Cluster of Excellence where she is the Principal Investigator of the project 'History of Paper of Ethnic Groups in Southwest China and Mainland Southeast Asia (in Zomia)'. This project explores the complex history of hand-made paper in Asia. While there is a good amount of information about paper-production techniques in mainland China, Japan, and Korea, very little is known about papermaking in the borderland areas of southwestern China and upper mainland Southeast Asia (Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam) where minority ethnic groups still keep their traditions of papermaking. Helman-Ważny's research contributes to our understanding of how these traditions developed and evolved, especially in light of specific local circumstances.

Helman-Ważny joined CSMC in 2010. She served as Research Associate on the project 'History and Typology of Paper in Central Asia during the First Millennium AD: Analysis of Chinese Paper Manuscripts' from 2010 to 2014 and as Principal Investigator of the project 'The Mustang Archives: Analysis of Handwritten Documents via the Ethnographic Study of Papermaking Traditions in Nepal' from 2015 to 2017.