Paweł Bagiński recently submitted a Ph.D. dissertation in cultural studies at the University of Warsaw. His dissertation examines Polish media discourses on sexual harassment in the workplace from 1990s and 2000s. He was a visiting researcher at the Central European University in Vienna, the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Michigan (Dianne Widzinski Fellowship).

Research interests:

• sociology and anthropology of culture

• gender studies

• violence and discrimination

• work

• affect theory

• postsocialism/neoliberalism in Poland

Current project:

The Politics of Sensibilities in Polish Press Discourse on the Sexual Harassment of Women during the Postsocialist Transformation

The aim of the project is to analyze the ways in which the category of sexual harassment of women in the workplace was constructed in the Polish press discourse during postsocialist transformation and the role these constructions played in shaping sensitivity to gender-related violence and discrimination. By examining the discussions that accompanied the emergence of sexual harassment of women as a social problem in Poland, I analyze how the construction of this category reflected divergent positions on gender equality as well as the ambivalent aspirations of postsocialist transformation, oscillating between imitation of an imagined Western order of liberal democracy and market economy, and the protection of national autonomy in the context of globalization and European integration. The dissertation examines tensions between the production of expert knowledge on sexual harassment of women as a form of gender-related violence and discrimination and other ways of constructing this phenomenon in press discourses of affects, masculinity, social class, and Polishness.

Selected recent publications:

“Is it true that women are sexually harassed in our country too?” Discourses on Sexual Harassment in the Polish Magazine The Mirror from 1980 to 2020, in: Dynamics of Gender Relations – Process-Sociological Perspectives, eds. Marta Bucholc, Valerie Dahl, Stefanie Ernst, Palgrave Macmillan (2025).

“Rainbow Patriotism” – Sexual and Gender Minority in the Game for the Representation and Reproduction of Polishness, in: Established-Outsiders Relations in Poland. Reconfiguring Elias and Scotson, ed. Marta Bucholc, Palgrave Macmillan (2024).

“We might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem”: on Truth-Discourse About Violence Against Women in the First Phase of the Polish #MeToo (#JaTeż) Action (October 2017) on Facebook, Stan Rzeczy, vol. 2 (2019), 161-181.