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Newsletter 3/2026

2026-10-10

 

International Egodocumental Network
(Egodocumental Research Group)

Newsletter 3/2026

Dear colleagues, we are pleased to present the third newsletter of 2026, which contains the latest developments in research and academic life in the field of egodocuments.

Network News

International Egodocumental Network Seminar 2/2026 (6)

The second on-line seminar of the International Egodocumental Network in 2026 will take place on 12 November at 18.30 (Warsaw Time). The lecture "'While They Ate, They Wept': The Egodocumentary Dimension of Édouard de Pomiane's Culinary Writings" will be presented by Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. We warmly invite you to join the meeting on Teams. Please contact us to obtain the seminar link.

Abstract:

This talk examines culinary literature as a form of egodocumentary writing, taking the work of Edward Pożerski as a case study. Known as Édouard de Pomiane, Pożerski was a food physiologist, physician, as well as a pioneer and advocate of food safety. As a professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the author of books on healthy eating, he became a leading authority on nutrition in the 1920s. However, in France and beyond, he achieved his greatest fame as the author of cookbooks and host of radio programmes devoted to cooking. He was the first culinary celebrity of the mass-media era and even appeared on television at a time when the medium was still in its infancy. He contributed to Le Figaro, Elle (formerly Pour Elle), La Cuisine et Vins de France, and numerous other popular publications. He appeared in food advertisements, delivered lectures to large audiences, and taught cookery courses. He promoted the use of gas in the kitchen and developed the concept of gastrotechnie, which sought to bring together science and art, an approach that reflected his own wide-ranging interests as a painter and musician.

Born in Paris into a family of Polish émigrés who had participated in the January Uprising of 1863–1864, Pożerski attended a Polish school and grew up within Polish émigré circles, initially without learning to speak French. For him, Poland was a distant, marvellous, and idealised place. He came to know his ancestral homeland primarily through its cuisine, particularly the festive dinners organised by his father. As Polish dishes were served, guests would often weep, recalling the tastes of their childhood and the homeland they had lost.

These and other Polish culinary themes run throughout Pożerski's work, most notably in his books on Jewish and Polish cuisine. He was also the author of two memoirs devoted to the Polish school in Paris, his childhood, and his work at the Pasteur Institute.
The most intriguing and revealing material, however, can be found in the reminiscences scattered throughout his books, recounted in his culinary radio programmes, and published in numerous articles. Taken together, they reveal a distinctive form of culinary memory, one that shaped the scholar and media celebrity he became throughout his life. At the same time, these reminiscences formed part of a carefully constructed self-image. This image was conveyed not only through his writings and broadcasts but also through his physical appearance and the photographs, advertisements, and promotional leaflets in which he appeared, endorsing such products as bananas, the Thermomix, stock cubes, and peanuts.

 Dr hab. Jarosław Dumanowski, professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, specialises in the history of culture. His research focuses on the history of food and culinary practices, culinary heritage, material culture, and Polish-French relations in the modern period.

2nd International Network Conference

The 2nd International Egodocumental Network Conference. Researching Egodocuments in the Twenty-First Century: Opportunities and Challenges will take place in Paris on 7-9 April 2027. We warmly invite you to submit a paper. The detailed Call for Papers (CFP) is available at the conference website https://ien.umk.pl.

The deadline for submissions has been extended to 1 November 2026.

Please send your submissions to: ienc2027@uni.lodz.pl

Egodocumental Journals

Rocznik Egodokumentalny. Journal of Egodocuments and Self-Narratives

We warmly invite you to submit your papers to the second volume of the academic journal Rocznik Egodokumentalny. Journal of Egodocuments and Self-Narratives.

We accept submissions in Polish, English, and German. The journal is published online and offers early access to articles prior to the publication of the complete volume. The first volume is scheduled for publication by the end of 2026.

Detailed information about the journal is available here: https://apcz.umk.pl/RE/index.

Ceride: Journal of Ego-Document Studies Ceride: Journal of Ego-Document Studies

Preparation for Ceride: Journal of Ego-Document Studies Ceride: Journal of Ego-Document Studies continues its publication life without pause. Editorial processes and layout designs for the 7th and 8th issues, scheduled for publication in December, are being carried out simultaneously. This combined issue will provide comprehensive content regarding the current literature in the field.

Centre for Self-Narratives of the University of Lodz

The CFSN continues its series of lectures (in Polish) dedicated to the exploration of personal narratives with its third lecture. Dr Anna Brzezińska (University of Lodz) will give a talk titled “Parę osób, mały czas. Perspektywa egodokumentalna w historiografii” (A Few People, Little Time: The Egodocumental Perspective in Historiography). The title quotation, taken from Miron Białoszewski’s poem Jak to powiedzieć (How to Put It), touches upon the concept of what, according to Marc Bloch, history was meant to investigate (people in time). The Dutch concept of egodocumentary research, which in recent years has brought together a wide circle of researchers from various humanities disciplines, although formulated by historians (Jacques Presser, Rudolf Dekker, Arianne Baggerman, Michael Mascuch), has raised, and continues to raise, doubts amongst historians, particularly those specialising in the theory of historical sources. The presentation outlined various approaches to egodocuments in European and American historiography, with a view to exploring the potential of this approach from the perspective of the discipline of history.

Date and time: 23 October 2026, 14:00

Location: Aula Iji Lazari-Pawłowskiej, al. Lindleya 3/5, Lodz.

The event will also be broadcasted on youtube. The link will be published on: www.uni.lodz.pl/cfsn and on the Facebook Page of the Centre: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586255073913

New Publications

Knygotyra Volume 86 released.

Volume 86 of Knygotyra (Book Science) has been published as a special issue dedicated to egodocuments and is available here: https://www.zurnalai.vu.lt/knygotyra/lt/issue/view/3027

The English-language articles in this volume focus on the early modern period and are based on papers presented at the First Egodocuments Network Conference, held in Vilnius in 2025, under the title Egodocuments: From Medieval Codex to Modern Media: Narratives, Representations, Identities.

Among the articles are:

…and many other articles.

We warmly invite you to explore the volume!

Book

  1. Hadrian Ciechanowski, Wojciech Piasek, Anna Strehlke, Ludzie relacje i miejsca. Środowisko historyczne Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu w perspektywie historii mówionej [People, Relationships, and Places: The Historical Milieu of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń from the Perspective of Oral History], Toruń, 2026.

Book summary:

The concept of the historical milieu, which we employ in our monograph, has been used since the 1970s in research on the history of historiography. Despite its long-standing presence in the field, no uniform and universally accepted definition of the term has been established. We make no such claim ourselves. Nevertheless, the concept is highly useful for our purposes. Adapting it to the scope of our research, we may define it as a community of historians institutionally connected through the organisational units that brought them together at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. This is how we understand the phrase “the historical milieu of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń” used in the title. At the same time, we give substance to these formally defined boundaries through the elements indicated in the main title—people, the relationships between them, and places.

Book can be found here: https://wydawnictwo.umk.pl/produkt/ludzie-relacje-i-miejsca-srodowisko-historyczne-uniwersytetu-mikolaja-kopernika-w-toruniu-w-perspektywie-historii-mowionej

Articles

  1. Radosław Dylewski, Zuzanna Witt, “Nieelitarna korespondencja XIX wieku. Listy do bliskich w ujęciu porównawczym: polscy emigranci w Ameryce i szeregowcy armii konfederacji” [Non-elite 19th-century correspondence. Letters to loved ones in comparative perspective: Polish emigrants in America and Confederate Army privates], The Linguistic Guide, 836 (7), 2026: 86–114. https://doi.org/10.33896/PorJ.2026.7.6.
  2. Mateusz Wyżga invites to read his historical columns based on egodocumental sources. His articles can be found here: https://ohistorie.eu/?s=Wy%C5%BCga

Projects

Neruda Archives

Michal Neruda would like to introduce to the network members the Neruda Archives, an independent and freely accessible digital archive of historical correspondence dating from 1716 to 1914.

Project overview:

The project grew out of collecting old family letters and wanting to make their contents available to others. Alongside family and personal correspondence, it also includes business letters. The Ordinary Lives and Families & Houses collections document everyday life, family relationships and connections between people in different countries.

Published records bring together images of the original documents, transcriptions, English translations, metadata and available provenance information. Some also include additional historical context. Readers can therefore return to the primary sources and explore them according to their own questions.

Main website: https://www.neruda-archives.org/

Research catalogue and primary sources: https://archive.neruda-archives.org/

TÜBİTAK 1001 Project Delivered

Prof. Selim Karahasanoğlu from İzmir Demokrasi Üniversitesi announces that the  TÜBİTAK 1001 project titled “Ottoman Ego-Documents: Inventory and Analysis (15001800),” which has been ongoing since 2023, was officially concluded as of March 2026. Within the scope of this project, the corpus of Ottoman ego-documents spanning the 16th to 19th centuries was subjected to systematic classification and the analysis processes were completed.

Egodocuments on YouTube

Michaël Green invites you to subscribe to his YouTube channel @HistoriansinConversation-tw1xf, dedicated to his podcast Historians in Conversation. The podcast focuses on historians and their academic careers and currently contains 35 episodes. It also contains the recordings of previous International Egodocumental Networks seminars and lectures.

The newest episode is a conversation with Prof. Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir from the University of Iceland, in which she reflect on her childhood in the beautiful countryside and the impact it had on her as a historian. Listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzcVfNiEPao and on all podcast platforms.

Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoriansinConversation-tw1xf 

Other News

Dr hab. Michaël Green, prof. UŁ (University of Lodz) has been elected as director at large at the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), the largest scholarly society in the world dedicated to the study of the early modern period.

International Egodocumental Network (IEN) News

  1. We encourage you to share information about the Network with your colleagues who may be interested in our work.
  2. We remind you of three publication avenues for egodocumental research: the Brill series Egodocuments and History and Studies in the History of Privacy (which also allows smaller publications in the form of minigraphs of 30-60,000 words), as well as the newest egodocumental journal Rocznik Egodokumentalny. Journal of Egodocuments and Self-Narratives.

Information about network members

A gentle reminder to those who wish to publish their research profile on the Network’s website (https://egodocuments.umk.pl/) to facilitate communication and interconnection: please complete the attached form and return it to us. The template includes the following information: last and first name, academic title and position, affiliation, period of interest, keywords, remarks, and email address. It also comprises the GDPR statement, which must be completed to publish the information on-line. If you are interested in publishing your profile on our website, please send us a scanned, signed copy of the template to the email address egodocuments@umk.pl.

As always, we look forward to your information about publications, grants, conferences, workshops, searches for collaborators, or other information or requests you would like to share with the network members. Please send us a description (in English) and materials to egodocuments@umk.pl. We will be pleased to share them with the Network.

Hadrian Ciechanowski
Egodocumental Research Group