Urszula Kicińska

Urszula Kicińska, dr hab. Associate Professor Department of Early Modern History Institute of History and Archival Studies University of the National Education Commission, Krakow

Research Interests

• mentality and everyday life in the Saxon era;
• aristocratic women’s courts in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth;
• social and economic activity of noblewomen;
• paranaetics and early modern moralistic literature;
• eschatology and the culture of death in early modern Poland;
• material culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Profile

Urszula Kicińska (b. 1983) holds a habilitation (dr hab.) in the humanities in the discipline of history. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Early Modern History at the Institute of History and Archival Studies, University of the National Education Commission, Krakow. Her research addresses the mentality of the Saxon era, the functioning of aristocratic women’s courts, the social and economic activity of noblewomen, paranaetics, eschatology, and the material culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Research Grants

She has served as co-investigator on three research projects funded by the National Science Centre, all directed by Prof. dr hab. Bożena Popiołek as principal investigator. These projects have shaped her ongoing engagement with the cultural and material history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Saxon era, and they form the foundation of her work on noblewomen, female patronage, and the social functioning of aristocratic households.

• The Correspondence of Elżbieta Sieniawska née Lubomirska, Castellan of Cracow: Editorial Preparation and Content Analysis.
• Benefactresses and Clients: The Specificity of Female Patronage and Client Relations in the Saxon Era.
• The Noblewoman’s Court in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Saxon Era: Structure, People, Culture, Functions.

Selected Publications

Dr hab. Kicińska is the author of more than ninety scholarly and popular publications devoted to the social and cultural history of early modern Poland, including two monographs. Her books examine the position and representation of noblewomen in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with particular attention to widowhood, the discursive construction of femininity, and the genre conventions of funeral oratory.

• Wzorzec szlachcianki w polskich drukowanych oracjach pogrzebowych XVII wieku [The Model Noblewoman in Polish Printed Funeral Orations of the Seventeenth Century], Warsaw, 2013.
• „W tym osieroconym stanie…”. Pozycja wdowy w społeczeństwie szlacheckim w Rzeczypospolitej (od schyłku XVII wieku do połowy XVIII wieku) [“In This Orphaned State…”: The Position of the Widow in Noble Society in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the Late Seventeenth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century], Krakow, 2020.

Academic Memberships

Dr hab. Kicińska is a member of the Commission on the History of Women of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Research Group on Courts and Power Elites, professional bodies that bring together scholars working on women’s history, court culture, and the social structures of early modern Polish-Lithuanian society.