Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek is a researcher in humanities focusing on historical anthropology and Ukrainian studies. Her research focus is on the study of individual and social memory and the related issues, such as the commemoration and memorialization of the Holodomor Famine in Ukraine and in the diaspora, the life in small towns at the turn of the 19^th – 20^th centuries in East and Central Europe, and oral history. In 2007, she received a Master’s degree in History; in 2010  - a Master’s Degree in Russian Philology; in 2012 – a Doctoral Degree in History at the Jagiellonian University (Cracow, Poland). In 2015, she was awarded a scholarship from the Lanckoronski Family Fund. She participated in a research residency under the Research and Education Consortium for Holodomor Studies in Toronto (November 2017). In 2014-2021, she was engaged in a bilateral study "Social Anthropology of Filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine After the WW2" implemented by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology in partnership with the Center for Urban History (coordinator Dr. Anna Wylegala, with financial support from the National Program for Humanities at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Poland, registration number 12H 13 0584 82). In 2019-2020, she implemented her original research on relations between Polish and Russian aristocracy in Sub-Russian Ukraine in 1867-1917. (MINIATURA 2 grant from the National Science Center, Poland). Her current project is about provincial towns of the Russian Empire during the modernization period through the lens of personal literature (letters, diaries, and reminiscences).

In terms of theory, Wiktoria is embedding her research within the "conceptual history" and historical semantics, according to Reinhart Koselleck. The method of studying the past is about realizing that each past is linguistically preconditioned and that each language was built in the past. That is why she refers to the concepts of "cultural space" and "cultural image of the city" and interprets them in the context of ego-literature. In fact, these texts reflect the experience of urban space from the viewpoint of the authors.

Wiktoria hopes that the residency in the Center for Urban History will expand her theoretical perspectives due to the academic discussions. The research in Lviv archives and libraries rich in relevant sources will significantly contribute to her paper.