On Sunday, 26 November, a gala ceremony will be held at the Artur Rubinstein Philharmonic Hall in Łódź to present the Prof. Tadeusz Kotarbinski Award to the author of the best humanities book in Poland published in 2022. The winner of the prize will receive PLN 70,000 from the Rector of the University of Lodz for further scientific development.

In the ninth competition organised by the University of Łódź, the best five proposals were selected from among 61 submitted books.

The finalists of the competition are::

“Anatomical Atlas of Georg Büchner” by Prof. Anna Rosa Burzyńska, Jagiellonian University Publishing House;

‘Untold Biographies. Polish children born because of the war” by Dr Jakub Gałęziowski, Krytyka Polityczna Publishing House,

“Philosophy towards the Holocaust. Concepts of Martin Heidegger’s critical theory and post-structuralism’ by Dr Piotr Kendziorek, Jewish Historical Institute,

“Twilight of the liberal international order 2011-2021” by Prof. Roman Kuźniar, SCHOLAR Scientific Publishers,

“Peasantry. History without a tie” by Prof. Mateusz Wyżga, Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak.

The works submitted to the competition are evidence of the excellent condition of the Polish humanities, illustrating its openness, originality, uncommon research topics and the form of presentation of the results. “We are extremely pleased that over these few years we have been able to show that Polish humanities is a visible and valuable part of the world’s output”, said Prof. Elżbieta Żądzińska, Rector of the University of Łódź, Chairwoman of the Award Jury.

Established since 2015, the competition has received more than 540 works from 145 Polish scientific centres during its previous competitions. The finals of all events have already included 45 outstanding books. “The growing popularity of the prize has helped all these works to be more effectively promoted and presented to a wider audience, resulting in more than 1,500 media mentions of the competition”, emphasises the University of Łódź’s Centre for Communication and PR.

Adrian Andrzejewski