Justyna Olko
Scientific coordinator of the Warsaw team.
Professor at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw; director of its Center for Research and Practice in Cultural Continuity; she obtained a doctoral degree in the humanities in 2005 at the UW’s Faculty of History and habilitation in ethnology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 2016. She specializes in the ethnohistory, anthropology and sociolinguistics of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mesoamerica, with a special focus on Nahua language and culture, cross-cultural communication as well as decolonizing research methodologies and practices. Olko is also involved in a program for revitalizing the Nahuatl language and works with researchers and activists committed to revitalizing endangered languages of ethnic minorities in Poland. Author of several books, including Meksyk przed konkwistą [Mexico before the Conquest] (PIW, Warsaw 2010, Klio Prize 2010) and Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World (University Press of Colorado, 2014); editor and co-author of Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past. Colonial Nahua and Quechua Elites in Their Own Words (University Press of Colorado & University of Utah, 2018), co-editor of the monolingual series in Nahuatl Totlahtol [“Our Speech”]. She has received fellowships to conduct research at Dumbarton Oaks, the John Carter Brown Library and Yale University as well as grants from the European Research Council (Starting Grant 2012), the Foundation for Polish Science, the National Science Centre and the European Commission (Twinning Program, Horizon 2020, 1016) and the Team grant (Foundation for Polish Science, 2017). She has been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2013) and a Burgen Fellowship by Academia Europaea (2013).
