For Polish please visit my profile on the website of the Institute of Audiovisual Art, Jagiellonian University.
I am an assistant professor at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, where I served as an associate director in 2017-2020.
I am a Member of Executive Committee of International Committee for the History of Technology ICOHTEC (2019-2021).
In 2021 I was named SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) International Scholars for 2-year term.
Right now I am conducting a research project The Deaf History of Cinema. Its main objective is to present and analyze the complex, mutual relations between deafness and cinema (as a form of art, and as technology), with a special emphasis on sound introduction and expansion. I investigate the ways deaf communities and sound amplification technologies for the deaf influenced cinema, and how cinema changed deaf communities and their sign languages. I plan to conduct the first of its kind ethnographic research of Polish deaf film makers.
I have finished a book-length project, Telephones, cyborgs, and cinema. Entangled relations between deafness and technology, funded by the Polish National Science Center. Its main objective was to portray the complicated, complex, and most importantly mutual relations between the technology and the d/Deaf communities. The project combined deaf and disability studies, history of technology, and the ethnographic field research including participant observation and interviews (for which I have learned – and still improving – Polish Sign Language). Forthcoming book Telefon, kino i cyborgi. Wzajemne relacje niesłyszenia i techniki will be published in Polish in 2021 by the Jagiellonian University Press.
My first book Telewizja na pograniczach (Television on the borderlines, 2013) is devoted to intercultural communication potential of the television on global, regional and local scale. Part of the book is devoted to Polish national and ethnic minorities and their own television programmes produced together with the Polish Public Televison – you may download the Polish version of it below.
Visiting Positions:
My work is grounded in: deaf studies, disability studies, and disability history, cultural studies and history of technology, film history, and media studies.
- University of Sheffield (2017)
- Rochester Institute of Technology (2017)
- Gallaudet University, Washington (2014)
- York University, Toronto (2011)
Magdalena Zdrodowska 