Katarzyna Zechenter

Dr Katarzyna Zechenter is an Associate Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. Katarzyna specializes in Polish contemporary literature and the history of ideas, specifically suffering and cultural trauma in Poland. She is the author of the first English language monograph of Tadeusz Konwicki ("The Fiction of Tadeusz Konwicki: Coming to Terms with Post-war Polish History and Politics"), and the editor of a highly popular book on bilingualism ("Bilingual and Bicultural: Speaking Polish in North America') that ran to three editions - two in the UK and one in the USA.
She has written on the transformation of post-1989 spatial identity; the concept of suffering; memory and identity formation, on Polish-Jewish literature, and bilingualism.

Katarzyna is also an award-winning poet whose poems regularly appear in major literary journals in Poland. Her last volume of poetry, 'There and Here', (Tam i tutaj: Poznań 2019) was nominated for *Orfeusz Literary Prize for 2019* and won *The Best Book Award of the Union of Polish Writers Abroad*. Her poems in English appear in The Bangalore Review or in Bhutan (Tashi Delek).