The Polish Studies Association holds a competition for a research award in the amount of up to $2,000. The award is intended to support active, graduate-level research on projects pertaining to Polish topics in any discipline or methodology. It is not intended as a write-up award. Grant monies are to be used for research-related purposes, e.g., travel, research materials, visas, etc., and should not be used to pay for tuition at home institutions. There are no citizenship requirements for this grant, and we invite eligible applicants based at academic institutions all over the world to apply.

Applicants must be members of the Polish Studies Association at the time of their application. 

Applications are due by September 1, 2025 and consist of the following materials:

1. a two-page description of the research project
2. a schedule of the research plan (including the location of relevant documents)
3. a budget
4. the name and contact information of one academic advisor or mentor who would be willing to provide a reference upon request 

Please submit application materials to Piotr Puchalski (piotr.puchalski@uken.krakow.pl), the chair of the award committee. Applications will be reviewed by a multidisciplinary committee (Łukasz Musiaka, Piotr Puchalski, Agata Tumilowicz-Masur, and Nikolas Weyland).

2025 Winner:

The 2025 PSA Graduate Student Research Award goes to Łukasz Kiełpiński for his project: “From Warsaw Uprising to Black Panthers: How Edward Laudański Became Edouard de Laurot“.

In his field research, to be conducted in New York City and Los Angeles, Łukasz Kiełpiński will reconstruct the life and intellectual legacy of Edward Laudański—better known in the West as Edouard de Laurot—a Warsaw insurgent turned political filmmaker and theorist engaged with the Black Panthers movement. In his promising dissertation project, the award-winner will aim to recover a forgotten chapter of Polish participation in transnational cultural history and intellectual exchange in the 20th century.

Congratulations, Łukasz! The PSA is delighted to support this project, and we look forward to learning more about this research in the future.

2023 Winner:

Zora Piskačová (Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) received the 2023 PSA Graduate Student Research Award for the project titled: Torn Towns: Municipal Administrators between the Local and the National  in Cieszyn and ČeskýTěšín, 1919-1938