dr Elżbieta Kowalska

Elżbieta Kowalska is a researcher and designer based in Gdynia, Poland. She graduated with a BA in Printmaking from the University of Arts in Poznań, and then with a MA in Interactive Media and Performances from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

Her articles have been published in the journals Studia Humanistyczne AGH and View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture. Kowalska’s next peer-reviewed text will be published in Hyphen Journal (2025). She has had the opportunity to present her research at international conferences: Hyphen Colloquium: Overflows and Interdependencies at the University of Westminster in London (2020, online) and Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference: Emergency and transformation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden (2022). In 2024, under the supervision of prof. Agnieszka Jelewska, she defended with distinction her doctoral thesis Earth Datafication. Critical studies on history, development and cultural practices based on geographic information systems.

She is a co-author of the New Message project – an interactive installation inspired by the work of Stanisław Lem – which was unveiled at the Prague Quadrennial (2019), presenting another version of the New Message – Fertile Imaginations at the WRO Art Biennale (2022). She was responsible for the graphic design of Karolina Sobecka’s artistic intervention Field Remediations: Salvage at the Conference of Parties 24 in Katowice (2019). In 2022, she assisted in the editing of the film Chicory Unpacked (European Horizon 2020) by artists and researchers Jill Scott and Marille Hahne.

During her BA and MA studies she worked as a workshop assistant at the Animator Festival. During the four years of her PhD studies she taught classes on creative coding, digital mapping and critical studies of culture and technology. She exhibited her works at the Poznań Poets Festival and the Malta Festival. She also has lots of experience in graphic and web design, digital animation, programming websites, interactive interfaces and simple games.

Her research examines the intersections between coded spaces, visual language, art, design and politics. In her practice she works with feminist and critical methodologies seeking to understand how technologies such as geographic information systems and spatial mapping technologies are imagined, constructed and operated, and how they influence the world and social imaginations.

Portfolio

Contact: elzkow@amu.edu.pl