BURYŁA Sławomir

Born on 8 February 1969 in Krasnobród in the Lublin region; son of the farmers Antoni Buryła and Helena, née Kustra. He began his middle school education in 1984 at the Woodworking Technical School in Zwierzyniec near Biłgoraj before moving to the Grammar School in nearby Józefów for the second half of the school year. He completed his advanced secondary education there in 1988. In 1989, he started a degree in Polish philology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK) in Torun. He co-edited the student monthly "Dziady" between around 1990 and 1992. After graduating from UMK with a master's degree in 1994, he spent as year teaching Polish language at the Primary School in Świerczynki near Torun before starting a doctoral degree at UMK. His research focused on World War II and occupation-era literature, with a particular focus on the Holocaust. He made his debut in 1996 with a review of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński's books Portret wenecki. Trzy opowiadania (Venetian Potrait: Three short stories). The review, titled Z lęku przed retoryką (In fear of rhetoric), appeared in the periodical "Opcje" (no. 2). Another review, this time of Dževad Karahasan's book Sarajevo: Exodus of a City (Polish: Sarajewska sevdalinka), appeared under the title Świat, który odchodzi (A world departing) in the periodical "Literatura" (no. 11). He was awarded a doctoral degree from the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN) in 1999 for his dissertation Kultura i Zagłada. O pisarstwie Tadeusza Borowskiego i Leopolda Buczkowskiego (Culture and the Holocaust: On the writings of Tadeusz Borowski and Leopold Buczkowski). He was supervised by Prof. Maria Janion. He took up a position at the University of Warmia and Mazury (UWM) in Olsztyn in 1999, where he was appointed lecturer at the Institute of Polish Philology (IFP; from 2016, the Institute of Polish Studies and Speech Therapy) at the Chair of Contemporary Literature, which in 2006 became the Centre for Twentieth-Century Literature and Literary Theory. He was awarded funding by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) within the START programme for early career researchers in 2000 and then for young doctoral researchers in 2002. He was the winner of the competition for FNP Monographs in 2005. He received the Scientific Prize of the UWM Rector on numerous occasions (2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016). He became a regular collaborator with the Research Group for Holocaust Literature, established in 2004, at IBL PAN. His articles, studies and reviews appeared in periodicals including "Kresy" (intermittently 1996-2004), "PAL Przegląd Artystyczno-Literacki" (1997-2000), "Twórczość" (from 1997), "Akcent" (1998-2001), "Regiony" (1998-2004), "Pamiętnik Literacki" (intermittently from 1999), "Ruch Literacki" (1998-99 and 2003), "Znak" (1999-2016), "Pogranicza" (2000-03), "Nowe Książki" (intermittently from 2001), "Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego imienia Adama Mickiewicza" (2001 and 2003), "Teksty Drugie" (2001), "Więź" (2001-10), "Zagłada Żydów" (from 2006), and "Znak" (2007-11 and 2013-16). In 2007, he was awarded a habilitation degree from PAN for his study Opisać zagładę. Holocaust w twórczości Henryka Grynberga (Describing the Shoah: The Holocaust in the work of Henryk Grynberg). He continued to collaborate with the IFP at UWM, becoming head of the Centre (and from 2010 Department) of Literary Theory in 2007, serving until 2017 when he became a member of the Department, From 2007 to 2018, he was a member of the Council of the Faculty of Humanities at UWM in Olsztyn. He was director of the faculty's Doctoral Programme (2008-15), head of its postdoctoral programme in Textual Editing (2008-12), and director of the IFP at UWM from 2010 to 2014. He was a member of the Scientific Council of the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH) in Warsaw, chairing it from 2009 to 2013. He was later appointed to the Institute's Programme Council, which was founded in 2013. In 2020, he was made deputy chair of the ŻIH Programme Council. He also had a position at the Pułtusk Academy of Humanities (2006-09) and the Higher School of Information Science and Economics in Olsztyn (2009-14). He was made state-appointed professor in 2015. In 2016, he became a member of the Borussia Cultural Association. From 2016 to 2021, he ran the interdisciplinary research project Reprezentacje Zagłady w kulturze polskiej (1939–2015) (Representations of the Holocaust in Polish culture, 1939-2015). He was awarded the Prize of the President of the City of Olsztyn in 2019 in recognition of his achievements in artistic output and both disseminating and preserving cultural values. In 2019, he joined the University of Warsaw (UW) while retaining his status as UWM as an active non-tenured member of staff. He was employed at UW as a professor at the Institute of Applied Polish Studies (IPS) in the Department of Editing and Stylistics. He joined the Scientific Council of IPS and also served as its deputy director of academic affairs between 2020 and 2024. In 2021, he jointed the Polish Studies Faculty Council at UW. He was given a distinction by the UW Rector and also won the UW Rector's Prize – First class in 2021. During the 2020/21 academic year, he taught on the one-year Postgraduate Programme in Polish-Jewish Studies at IBL PAN. He published studies, articles and pieces of literary criticism in journals including "Teksty Drugie" and "Twórczość", while in 2020 he joined the editorial board of the yearbook "Roczniki Humanistyczne". He gave numerous lectures at universities and institutes in Poland and abroad, including in Stockholm, Paris, Zagreb, Belgrade, St Petersburg, Mainz, Ljubljana, Moscow, and Lviv. He was active in outreach activities, including as a contributor to Polish Radio Olsztyn and the Olsztyn regional station of Polish Television (TVP). From 2019, he appeared on the Radio TOK FM podcast KultOFFe as a guest of Cezary Łasiczka. He lives in Olsztyn. He married the Polish language teacher Anna Kotyńska in 1995; they have two children, a daughter Florentyna (b. 1991) and a son Aleksander (b. 1992).