Last updated: 14 September 2026
Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, PhD
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9750-3901
aleksandra.kil-matlak@ibl.waw.pl
Bluesky: @aleksandrakil.bsky.social
Since 2026 -- Assistant Professor at the Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Since 2014 -- Co-founder and member of the Laboratory of Contemporary Humanities at the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław.
Research Experience
Principal Investigator, NCN SONATA project Cultural Mediology of Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Machine Learning in Humanities Knowledge Production, September 2026–August 2029. Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Doctoral Research Fellow, NCN OPUS project The Humanities Laboratory as a Mode of Knowing: From Archaeology to Design, March 2018–March 2020. Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław. Principal investigators: Prof. Dorota Wolska / Dr Jacek Małczyński. Research on the infrastructures of the analog humanities, with case studies of Paul Otlet’s Mundaneum, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale and Stanisław Pietraszko’s card index.
Fulbright Junior Advanced Research Award, Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission, September 2017–February 2018. Research under the supervision of Prof. Lisa Gitelman at New York University and Prof. Alan Liu at the Transcriptions Center, University of California, Santa Barbara; a residency as critic in residence at the Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado Boulder, under the supervision of Prof. Lori Emerson.
Two internal research grants for early-career researchers, Faculty of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences, University of Wrocław: Professor Stanisław Pietraszko’s Index Cards: Between an Archive and a Database. A Preposterous Analysis (2016) and Tools We Think With: What Kind of Humanities after the Digital Turn? (2015).
Research participant, The Soundscape of Wrocław: Research on the Audiosphere of a Central European City, Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław, 2013–2014. Research on the reception of Wrocław’s audiosphere and contribution of a book chapter.
Research participant, Electronic Maps to Assist Public Science, funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme. Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam, 2012–2015. Co-authorship of a book presenting findings from one strand of the project.
Awards and Honours
Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska Award for the best debut book in Cultural Studies, awarded by the Committee on Cultural Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences for Fiszki. Od humanistyki cyfrowej do analogowej [Index Cards: From Digital to Analog Humanities], IBL PAN Press, Warsaw, 2024, “Nowa Humanistyka” series.
Second Prize in the 10th Inka Brodzka-Wald Competition for the best doctoral dissertation in the humanities addressing contemporary issues, organised by the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2022.
Third Prize in the National Centre for Culture’s competition for the best doctoral dissertation in Cultural Studies, 2022.
Prime Minister’s Award for an outstanding doctoral dissertation, 2022.
Ministry of Science and Higher Education Scholarship for Outstanding Young Researchers, 2020.
ADHO Bursary Award for early-career researchers attending the Digital Humanities 2019 conference in Utrecht, awarded by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, July 2019.
Wincenty Styś Scholarship for doctoral students with outstanding achievements in the social sciences and humanities, awarded by the selection committee of the City of Wrocław’s Student Scholarship Programme, 2018/2019.
University of Wrocław Rector’s Scholarship for Outstanding Doctoral Students, 2014/2015 and 2013/2014.
Teaching Experience
2014–2016 — Taught seminars in Communication and Media Studies for third-year students at the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław. Designed and taught the following courses: Media Ecology / Archaeology / Geology (60 hours); Attention in the Age of New Media: Archaeologies, Ethnographies, Experiments (90 hours); and Non-Anthropocentric Media Studies (90 hours).
2015/2016 — Co-taught the elective course The Laboratory as an Idea and Institution of Modern Culture for students in years 1–5, Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław.
2018/2019 — Co-taught the seminar Ideas in Contemporary Humanities for students in years 1–5, Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław.
Selected Conference Presentations, Lectures and Discussions
4 December 2025 — Discussion of Fiszki. Od humanistyki cyfrowej do analogowej [Index Cards: From Digital to Analog Humanities] and Laboratorium humanistyczne. Od projektu do archeologii [The Humanities Laboratory: From Design to Archaeology], with Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Małczyński, Marcin Bogusławski and Marta Brewer. Hosted by the Łódź Branch of the Polish Philosophical Society. Online.
27 October 2025 — Invited lecture, The Humanities Laboratory as Mimicry, with J. Małczyński and J. Sieracka, in the seminar series Cultural Studies and the Challenges of the New Humanities. Institute of Cultural Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań.
11–13 September 2025 — Fifth Congress of the Polish Association of Cultural Studies, SWPS University / University of Warsaw. Presentations: Cultural Mediology of Artificial Intelligence: Machine Learning as a Cultural Technique in the Humanities and, with J. Małczyński and J. Sieracka, Openness and Collectivity in the (Post)Humanities Laboratory.
12 June 2025 — Discussion of Fiszki. Od humanistyki cyfrowej do analogowej [Index Cards: From Digital to Analog Humanities], as part of Kulturnatywa: Wrocław Cultural Studies Day, Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław.
23 May 2025 — Alan Liu’s Ethos of Good Work, presented at the symposium Ethos of the Unknown: Alan Liu on the Humanities in the Age of Information, Transcriptions Center, Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara. Online participation.
9 April 2025 — Panel discussion, What Goes on in Humanities Laboratories?, with Aleksandra Kil-Matlak, Jacek Małczyński, Tomasz Majewski, Agata Skórzyńska and Marta Rakoczy, moderated by Katarzyna Liszka. Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław, and Foto-gen Gallery, Wrocław.
8–12 July 2019 — Index Cards and the Analog Humanities. A Media Archaeology of Cultural Studies in Poland, presented in a long-paper session at the international conference Digital Humanities 2019, Utrecht University.
15–18 November 2018 — From the Archaeology of the Humanities Lab: A Tricky Case of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, with Dorota Wolska and Jacek Małczyński, presented at the international conference Making of the Humanities VII, University of Amsterdam.
1 December 2017 — Lecture, Index Cards and the Analog Humanities. A Media Archaeology of Polish Cultural Studies, Transcriptions Center, University of California, Santa Barbara.
27–29 June 2016 — Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Move the Humanities?, with Dorota Wolska and Jacek Małczyński, presented at the national conference New Humanities: Taking Positions, Negotiating Autonomy, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University.
17 March 2016 — Invited lecture, Disagreement That Builds a Collective: On Controversy Mapping, in the lecture series It’s the Community, Stupid!, Wrocław Contemporary Museum.
Other Academic Activities
May 2014–July 2017 — Editorial Secretary of the academic journal Audiosfera. Koncepcje – badania – praktyki, published by the Soundscape Research Unit at the University of Wrocław.
Since 2021 — Peer reviewer for Prace Kulturoznawcze.
2025 — Grant application reviewer for the Fulbright Junior Advanced Research Award and Fulbright Slavic Award programmes.