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Magdalena Zdrodowska, PhD

magda.zdrodowska@uj.edu.pl

Magdalena Zdrodowska is an Associate Professor in the Department of Audiovisual Media. She works at the intersection of disability studies, deaf studies, history of technology, and film history. Her research focuses on the relationship between deafness, technology, and film, including innovation and filmmaking by deaf people.

Zdrodowska holds MA degrees in Anthropology, and in Film Studies. She received her PhD in Art in 2010 and her Habilitation in Cultural Studies in 2022. 
She is the author of Television in the Borderlands (WUJ 2013), for which she was awarded the Rector's Prize of the Jagiellonian University, and Telephone, Cinema and Cyborgs. Mutual Relations of Deafness and Technology (WUJ 2021), which was honoured a distinction in the Jan Jędrzejewicz Award for the best book on the history of technology and science. She is currently leading the Deaf Cinema research project funded by the National Science Centre.

Zdrodowska is a member of the Committee for Cultural Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences (term 2024-2026), the Executive Council of SHOT - Society for the History of Technology (term 2024-2026), and the Executive Committee of ICOHTEC - International Committee for the History of Technology (term 2019-2023).
She is chair of the conference programme committee Interdependencies. From Microstories to Global Perspectives on the History of Technology (ICOHTEC, Estonia 2023) and Vice-Chair of the Reparando/Repair Conference Programme Committee (SHOT, Chile 2024).
She has been selected as a SHOT - Society for the History of Technology International Scholar (2021-2022).
She has been a visiting researcher at the School of Bussiness at York University in Toronto (2011), Gallaudet University in Washington DC (2014, 2022), Rochester Institute of Technology (2017, 2022), University of Sheffield (2017) and Indiana University (2023).
Zdrodowska has served on the editorial board of Cultural Studies Review (2010-2023) and as editorial secretary of TransMissions: the Journal of Film and Media Studies (2016-2018).

Principal Investigator in research projects:

  • 2020-2025 Deaf History of Cinema. Technological and cultural relations of cinema and deafness, funded by the National Science Centre
  • 2022-2024 Disability in Eastern Europe - Reconfigurations; research platform funded by the Priority Research Area HERITAGE under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University
  • 2015-2020 Telephone, cinema and cyborgs: the interplay of technology and deafness in the 20th and 21st centuries, funded by the National Science Centre
  • 2020 Hearing Trumpets for the Deaf in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Acoustic amplifiers in the age of electricity and electronics, funded by PFRON


Collaborator in research projects:

  • 2021-2025 Media and Epidemics (MEDEP). Technologies of Science Communication and Public Health in the 20th and 21st Centuries, an international research project led by the Institute of History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences, funded by CHANSE - Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe.
  • 2016 Krakow Library. Current state and directions of development of a unified network of municipal libraries in Krakow; conducted by Malopolski Instytut Kultury
  • 2015 Public Media Monitoring; funded by the National Broadcasting Council
  • 2014-2018 Polish Cultural Studies. History and Heritage of the Discipline; funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education
  • 2012 Urban Culture - Nodes and Flows; funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage

Articles in journals:

2023, “Thrice Precious Tube!” Negotiating the Visibility and Efficiency of Early Hearing Aids, “Journal of Design History”.
2023, I’m angry! Disability protests in post-Communist Poland, “Problems of Post-Communism”.
2021, Prosthetic Performances. Artistic Strategies, and Tactics for Everyday Life, “Icon”, vol. 26, no. 2 The Body and Technology, pp. 125-146.
2021, Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design, „Technology & Culture”, vol. 61, pp. 58-60.

Chapters in edited volumes:

[accepted] 2024, co-authored with Sławomir Łotysz, Reclaiming access to cinema by the deaf audiences. Disability perspective on technological revolution, in: Cambridge History of Technology Vol. III, Cambridge University Press.
2023, Accepting and opposing local deaf tradition. The Polish d/Deaf community after the fall of communism: 1989–2014, in: Global Histories of Disability. Power, Place and People, ed. Esme Cleall, Routledge.
2017, To document is to preserve: moving pictures and sign language, in Documentary and Disability, ed. Helen Hughes, Catalin Brylla, Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 243-258.
2017, Social media and Deaf empowerment: The Polish Deaf communities’ online fight for representation, in Disability and Social Media. Global Perspectives, ed. Kate Ellis, Mike Kent, Routledge, 2017, pp. 13-24. Published in Korean: Sosŏl mijiŏwa ch’ŏnggakchangaeinŭi yŏngyanggangwa: P’ollandŭ ch’ŏnggakchangaein k’ŏmyunich’iŭi p’yohyŏnŭl wihan ollain t’ujaeng, in: Changaewa sosŏl mijiŏ: kŭllobŏl kwanjŏm, tłum. Soojung Kim, Kyounghee Ma, Hakchisa, 2021.
2014, The Networked Deaf: New Media Platforms as a New Public Sphere for the Deaf, in Media, Power and Empowerment : Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference CEECOM Prague 2012, ed. Tereza Pavlíčková, Irena Reifová, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ss. 103-108 [conference proceedings].

Editorial works:

2025, „Centaurus” special issue Media and Epidemics: Technologies of Science Communication and Public Health in the 20th and 21st Centuries [with Irina Nastasa-Matei]

 

  • Vice-Chair of the Programme Committee of the Reparando/Repair Conference. SHOT - Society for the History of Technology, Chile 2024
  • Chair of the Programme Committee of the conference Interdependencies. From Microstories to Global Perspectives on the History of Technology, International Committee for the History of Technology ICOHTEC, Estonia 2023
  • Member of the Programme Committee of the conference A History of Technology for an Age of Crisis, International Committee for the History of Technology ICOHTEC, Netherlands, 2020
  • Member of the programme committee of the conference RE:SOUND Media Art History and chair of the Art and Technology track, Denmark, 2019
  • Member of the Programme Committee and Tutor of the Summer School 'Technology and Power'; International Committee for the History of Technology ICOHTEC Member of the Programme Committee and Tutor during; Katowice 2019
  • Co-organiser of the 'Media Ecologies' Summer School funded by the Visegrad Fund, Krakow 2012

Expert reviewer for:

  • the TRANS-ATLANTIC PLATFORM (T-AP) competition; organiser: Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP (Brazil)
  • the National Science Centre in the PRELUDIUM and MINIATURA programmes
  • the Polish National Competition "OPEN DOORS" for the best Master's and Doctoral Thesis on Disability in the Health, Professional or Social Dimension, organised by the State Fund for Rehabilitation of People with Disabilities