Ewa Kociszewska

EWA KOCISZEWSKA is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at St Catherine’s College. She received a PhD in History of Art from the University of Warsaw (2014). Before moving to Oxford she was a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London (2012–2014).

She has held grants and fellowships from the French Government (bourse de thèse en cotutelle, Centre André Chastel, Paris IV), the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris, the Warburg Institute (Saxl Fellowship), the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Iuventus Plus grant scheme), the Foundation for Polish Science, and the Fondazione Cini in Venice. She has published in French Studies Bulletin, Journal of the Warburg and Cortauld Institutes, Le Moyen Âge and Renaissance Quarterly. Her article “War and Seduction in Cybele’s Garden: Contextualizing Ballet des Polonais” (Renaissance Quarterly 65.2012) was awarded the William Nelson Prize by the Renaissance Society of America and the Nancy Roelker Prize by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference.

Kociszewska’s research will be devoted to Marie-Louise Gonzague de Nevers (1611–1667), Queen consort to two Polish kings, Władysław IV Vasa, king of Poland, and after his death, to his step-brother and successor, Jan II Kazimierz Vasa. In Warsaw she played an important role in the affairs of state and was an active patron of arts and science. This project concentrates on Marie-Louise’s life before her arrival in Poland in 1645. It aims to reconstruct the cultural and intellectual life of the princess in Nevers and Paris, and to examine her relations with leading figures in seventeenth-century France, e.g. Gaston d’Orléans, Michelle de Marolles, Marie de Gournay, and Madame de Rambouillet. It will question how education, Parisian salons, and contacts with early feminism shaped the cultural and social agenda of the Queen of Poland.

Contact: ewa.kociszewska@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk