Ex-centrum: peripheral points of view
The co-operation agreement was signed on Friday 2nd July by Professor Przemysław Wiszewski – Rector of the University of Wroclaw and Grzegorz Zygadło – President of the Management Board of Olga Tokarczuk’s Foundation. The Nobel Prize laureate was also present.
Olga Tokarczuk’s Ex-centrum Academic Research Centre is the implementation of one of the items set out in the statute of Olga Tokarczuk’s Foundation, which was created last year.
‘It means the active support of scientific and research activities,’ specified Grzegorz Zygadło, the president of the Management Board of the Foundation. He stressed that he and the rector of the University of Warsaw Professor Przemysław Wiszewski had wondered together during a conversation how the artists’ individual creative work leads directly to a diploma of the Academy of Fine Arts or opens an academic career path, while literature is excluded from these procedures. ‘What we would like to do is to break these shortages within an academic research centre,’ explained the president of Olga Tokarczuk’s Foundation. ‘We wish very much that what is not possible today – direct artistic achievements – would give an opportunity to enter the university world and open academic career paths,’ added Grzegorz Zygadło.
‘I hope that this will be only the beginning of a long fruitful co-operation that will help promote not only Olga Tokarczuk’s works and ideas, but also something important to us – a rational reflection on the surrounding world,’ stressed Professor Przemysław Wiszewski.
Competition for the research centre director
On Monday 5th July, a competition for the head of the centre will be announced (the final decision will be in September); it is worth adding that Olga Tokarczuk’s personal tutoring for a chosen student is also taken into account.
