The Department of Culture and Media Studies continues the activities of the Department of Knowledge about Culture established in 1998 at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Białystok. The first head of the Department, which originally was part of the Institute of Polish Philology, was professor Sławomir Krzemień-Ojak. Since 2010, the Department has been headed by professor Alicja Kisielewska.
In October 2011, when a cultural studies programme was established at the University of Białystok, managed by two faculties: Philological (Department of Knowledge about Culture) and Pedagogy and Psychology (Department of Cultural Studies), the Department of Knowledge about Culture became an independent unit at the Faculty, which organized the didactic work in cultural studies.
Following the change in the organizational structure of the Faculty of Philology, mandated by the Resolution of the Senate of the University of Bialystok of March 2017, the name of the Department of Knowledge about Culture was changed to the Department of Cultural and Media Studies. In April 2017, when the Inter-faculty Institute of Cultural Studies and Art was established, the Department of Cultural and Media Studies became part of the Faculty. Currently, the Department is part of the Faculty of Cultural Studies established in 2019, while at the same time it is an independent unit at the University of Białystok.
Starting in 1997, the Department conducted a series of seminars open to students and university employees under the title Culture and the Future, Time for Culture! and a series of nationwide conferences devoted to a discussion on new phenomena in culture and the directions of its transformation.
The Academic Society of Cultural Studies "KulSTRUKtura" operates under the auspices of the Department of Culture and Media Studies..
Research conducted at the Department covers several areas: audiovisual culture, cultural communication, cultural anthropology, media anthropology, intersection of philosophy and culture, new humanities, culture of the Podlasie region. Members of the Department research contemporary culture, in particular Polish culture, the culture of the Podlasie region from both the communication and media, as well as philosophical and cultural perspective.
Phone number: +48 (85) 745 72 79
