Research Turns in the Humanities in the 21st Century.

In contemporary humanities, especially after the terrorist attack on the WTC in 2001, which is considered the symbolic end of postmodernism, a phenomenon known as a paradigmatic change or shift has become increasingly visible. The research model is changing, which indicates what and how to research, as well as what is currently considered scientific. The observed paradigmatic change is manifested by a particular intensification of various types of “turns” in the humanities, related turns away and returns. The aim of this presentation is to identify the most important turns in the humanities of the last two decades, to define their characteristic features, representatives and examples of publications that manifest them, as well as to define what these turns actually are today. In the background of the considerations remains the fundamental issue of creating practical and socially useful knowledge and the slogan of emergency humanities, providing knowledge that will enable more sustainable and Earth-friendly development, and people’s survival in situations of conflicts and long-term and ever new crises.

Ewa Domańska – professor of humanities at the Faculty of History of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and since 2002 visiting professor at the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology Center and The Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (spring trimester). She deals with the methodology of history, contemporary theory and history of historiography, and comparative theory of the humanities and social sciences. She also conducts research on the relationship between ecocides and genocides, ontology of human remains and political exhumations. Author of affirmative humanities projects, rescue history and necrohumanities. She has published, among others, a monograph nominated for the Długosz Award: Nekros. Introduction to the Ontology of the Dead Body (PWN, 2017) and Political Exhumations. Theory and Practice (ed. with Alexandra Staniewska, słowo obraz/terytoria, 2022, in press).