Dr. hab. Karolina Wigura is a historian of ideas and sociologist. She is research associate of the SFB Affective Societies at Freie Universität, assistant professor at Warsaw University's Institute of Sociology, and board member of Kultura Liberalna (Liberal Culture), Poland’s leading online political and cultural weekly.

Wigura 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, Robert Bosch Academy 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.

Forgiveness, Emotions, Institutions

During her stay as at the Affective Societies, Karolina Wigura works on the project “Forgiveness, Emotions, Institutions”. The project aims at investigating the multifaceted role of collective emotions in contemporary Central and Eastern European societies in the context of the rise of populist politics. It tackles various aspects of how emotions are created and how they influence politics and society, for example polarization, new media technologies, and evolution of norms. It stresses the habitual and long-term character of collective emotions, their conditioning by historical and cultural factors.

The project is located at the intersection of the philosophy and sociology of emotions, the philosophy of memory, moral philosophy, and cultural history. It builds upon existing interdisciplinary work on the nature of emotions, paying particularly close attention to what the current research in political science and sociology tells us about collective emotions.

MONOGRAPHIES

Karolina Wigura, 2019, Wynalazek nowoczesnego serca. Filozoficzne źródła współczesnego myślenia o emocjach, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warsaw.

Karolina Wigura, 2011, Wina narodów. Przebaczenie jako strategia prowadzenia polityki, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warsaw.

ACADEMIC PAPERS IN JOURNALS

Karolina Wigura, Jarosław Kuisz, 2020, „The Pushback Against Populism: Reclaiming the Politics of Emotion”, Journal of Democracy, Vol 31/2, pp. 41-53.

Karolina Wigura, 2017, „Namiętności, uczucia, czy emocje? Trzy tradycje myślenia o afektach i trzy doktryny afektów w polityce”, Kultura i Społeczeństwo, LXI/3, pp. 3-26.

Karolina Wigura, 2017, „Declarations of Forgiveness and Remorse in European Politics”, European Legacy – Toward New Paradigms, 22/1, pp. 16-30.

Karolina Wigura, 2016, „Dämonologie. Polen vor vier verlorenen Jahren”, Osteuropa, 1-2, pp. 109-117.

Karolina Wigura, Łukasz Bertram, 2016, „Die Radikalisierung der polnischen Debatte zur europäischen Flüchtlingskrise“, Polen-Analysen, 178, pp. 2-8.

Karolina Wigura, 2015, „Die ausgebrannte Generation. Präsidentschaftswahlen in Polen 2015”, Osteuropa, 4, pp. 47-55.

Karolina Wigura, 2012, „Pokolenie pomocników artylerii: Habermas, Ratzinger, Luhmann i niemieckie spory“, Stan Rzeczy, 02, pp. 146-167.

Karolina Wigura, 2012, „Alternative Historical Narrative. Polish bishops’ appeal to their German colleagues of 18 November 1965“, East European Politics and Societies, 27/3, pp. 400-412.

Karolina Wigura, 2010, „Instytucje i deklaracje (uwagi do artykułu Roberta Piłata Ontologia pojednania)”, Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki, 2(27), pp. 351-358.

Karolina Wigura, 2010, „Między dyplomacją a moralnością. Deklaracje przebaczenia w polityce po 1945 roku“, Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki, 3(28), pp. 425-429.

Karolina Wigura, 2008, „Wybaczenie jako forma”, Przegląd Polityczny, 87, pp. 178-181.

Karolina Wigura, 2008, „Czy Chrystus umarł w Auschwitz? Zmagania teologii chrześcijańskiej z Shoah“, Kronos. Metafizyka, Kultura, Religia, 4/4, pp. 191-197.

Karolina Wigura, Jarosław Kuisz, 2004, „Skąd bierze się kradzież lub akceptacja kradzieży własności intelektualnej”, Etyka, 37, pp. 195-214.

EDITED VOLUMES

Karolina Wigura, Jarosław Kuisz (eds), 2020, The End of The Liberal Mind: Poland’s New Politics, with foreword from Ivan Krastev, Wydawnictwo Kultury Liberalnej, Warsaw.

Karolina Wigura, Jarosław Kuisz, Wojciech Sadurski (eds), 2018, Trudne rozliczenia z przeszłością. Sprawiedliwość okresu przejściowego w perspektywie międzynarodowej, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warsaw.

Karolina Wigura, Jarosław Kuisz, Wojciech Sadurski (eds), 2018, Trudne rozliczenia z przeszłością. Polska w perspektywie Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warsaw.

Karolina Wigura, Geoffrey Karabin, 2011, Forgiveness: Promise, Possibility, and Failure, E-Book, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford.