By Margaret S. Archer
Poland has been an outstanding supporter of Critical Realism ever since I started giving Masterclasses in Warsaw, as many will have noted from their hosting of the online IACR conference of 2020. Our colleagues there are very generous of their time and financial support. During the five years that I have been visiting regularly they have translated Being Human: the Problem of Agency and held a wonderful book launch: awarded me an Honorary Doctorate (honoris causa); and launched ‘Archerian Studies’ whose first two volumes have already been published and the third nearly so.
The good news is entirely of their making, namely the foundation and financing of an ‘Interfaculty Department of Critical Realism’ at the Academy of Applied Sciences of The Association for Adult Education in Szczecin, the first of its kind in Poland. Founded in March 2022, with five regular employees and several additional personnel, it has approximately 40 participants who attend regularly (mainly Polish) and 30 more who come when they can. At the end of 2021, I gave an inaugural lecture on Teams to this audience and the Department has pushed forward since then. The next stage is to establish a Student Research Group in Warsaw and to continue with new publications in the two languages.
The head of the IDCR is Professor Krzysztof Wielecki and the Deputy Head, Professor Joanna Stachowska.
There will be plenty of news to follow!