Topics: Social Change
Media
Regional focus: Europe
Origin: Poland
Fellowship: Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow

Karolina Wigura is a historian, sociologist and political editor of Kultura Liberalna, Poland’s leading online political and cultural weekly.

She is lecturer at Warsaw University's Institute of Sociology and focuses on the political philosophy of the 20th century and emotions in politics, as well as sociology and ethics of memory, particularly transitional justice, historical guilt, and reconciliation. From 2016 to 2018, she was a co-director of the Polish Programme in St. Antony's College at University of Oxford.

Wigura was awarded fellowships at Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin, Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna, German Marshall Fund, and St. Antony's College at University of Oxford. In 2008, she received the Grand Press prize for her interview with Jürgen Habermas "Europe in death paralysis."

She is the author of The Guilt of Nations: Forgiveness as a Political Strategy (2011) and The Invention of Modern Heart: Philosophical Sources of Contemporary Thinking of Emotions (2019) – both in Polish. Her work has also been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Gazeta Wyborcza, and other periodicals.

Wigura studied sociology, philosophy, and political science at University of Warsaw and University of Munich. She received her doctorate and habilitation from University of Warsaw.


Last updated: 2021