The Graduate School for Social Research

Sarah Grunberg graduated from Ithaca College in 2008 with a degree in Culture and Communication with a focus on Media and Cultural Studies.

Shortly after graduation, she moved to Warsaw, Poland to pursue her Masters in Culture Media and Society at the Graduate School for Social Research (2008/2009). Later she continued her studies at the GSSR at the PhD level focusing on the issue of the individual and family identities of Polish-African families in Poland.

After obtaining her PhD diploma (2017) Sarah Grunberg moved back to the US and joined the faculty at the Department of Sociology, Ithaca College.

Sarah is now working as an Instructional Designer at Cornell University.

She specializes in Race and Ethnic Relations; Social Change; Conflict and Resolution; Intergroup Dialogue and Qualitative Methods.

After graduating with MA in Economy and Society  in 2010 Daler Kabilov returned to Tajikistan and started his professional career at Baker Tilly. At present, he is Managing Partner in Baker Tilly (Tajikistan).

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Cristina Rat (MA in Culture, Media and Society 2001-2)  returned to Romania  to begin doctoral  studies at  “Babes-Bolyai” University Cluj Napoca. In 2003– 2004 she held an OSI/FCO Chevening Scholarship at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford. In 2008 she was awarded   her PhD in Sociology  awarded  at the Faculty of Sociology  and  Social  Work  of the “Babes-Bolyai” University Cluj Napoca. She is now lectures in the Sociology  Department of that university and was elected Head of Department in 2015-19.

David Stulik (MA in Society and Politics 1996-1997) is presently working as the Press and Information Officer at the EU Delegation in Kyiv, Ukraine. Prior to this position, he was shortly employed in the Czech Deputy Prime Minister Office, where he dealt with the preparations for the Czech EU Presidency. Before joining the public sector, David acted as the Head of Unit for Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova and the Coordinator of democracy projects in Eastern Europe in one of the largest Central European NGO, People in Need.

Previously, he served as the Project Manager at the Civil Society Development Foundation (NROS), which has been predominantly involved in the administration of PHARE programs aimed at the development of civil society in the Czech Republic. There, Mr. Stulik was coordinating 3-years project on preparations of Czech NGOs for EU accession, which was funded by CEE TRUST program.

He was also lecturing at the Charles University at the Department of Civil Society Sector. After the EU accession he has been appointed by the Czech government as a member of the European Economic and Social Committee, where he represented Czech non-governmental sector and also served as the Rapporteur for Belarus.

His professional experience also includes working for the independent Czech think tank, Institute for European policies Europeum, which he has co-founded. Mr. Stulik also served as Project Manager and Executive Assistant to Senior Vice President of the EastWest Institute, Euro-American think tank. During his studies he held the position of Vice President of AEGEE-Europe (European Students’ Association). In 1997 he received the award “Young European of the Year”.

Simon Lewis (MA in Culture, Media and Society,  2009) completed a PhD in Slavonic Studies in 2014 at the University of Cambridge, where he also worked on the HERA-sponsored international research project Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (2010-13). Before coming to Warsaw he studied at the University of Oxford (BA in Russian and Linguistics, 2005).

 Before joining FU Berlin as a DRS Research Fellow in January 2016, he was a Research Assistant on the project “The Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Memory and Identity in Central Europe”, based at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at the Social Memory Laboratory, Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw (2014-15). He also co-convenes the “Genealogies of Memory” conference series, which is based in Warsaw and run by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity.

Simon is currently a DFG “Eigene Stelle” Research Fellow at the Institute for Slavic Studies, University of Potsdam, where he is conducting a research project entitled “The Cosmopolitan Imagination in Polish Literature, ca. 1800-1939”.

Gregory Kossinets (MA in Economy and Society , 1999-2000) came to GSSR after completing a degree in Physics at Ogarev Mordovia State University.  After leaving GSSR he went to Columbia University where he was awarded his PhD in 2006. After working 2 years as a researcher at Cornell University he joined Google in San Francisco.  Since 2017 he has been Director of Data Science at Stitch Fix.

Zeynep Talay Turner came to the GSSR after completing her Master of Arts degree in the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, Boğazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. Previously she had completed a   Master of Arts programme in the Department of Philosophy of the   University of Warwick, Coventry, UK and Bachelor of Arts degree in Tourism and Administration, Boğazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. At GSSR   she completed her PhD in Philosophy defending her thesis on ‘Philosophy, Literature and the Dissolution of the Subject: Nietzsche, Musil, Atay”. On completing the PhD she began to study Sculpture in The Art Academy in London (2013) but returned to Istanbul two years later. She has had several exhibitions of her work. She is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature/MA in Philosophy and Social Thought/MA in Cultural Studies of Istanbul Bilgi University.

Justice Richard Kwabena Owusu Kyei obtained a BA in Theology from the Holy Cross Pontifical University, Rome, Italy after which he proceeded to Ca Foscari University in Venice, Italy where he gained an MA Migration and Social Transformation. He worked as an interpreter with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Gorizia, Italy. He then proceeded to the Graduate School for Social Research (GSSR),  where he earned his MA in Economy and Society and later a PhD in Sociology. He is now a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Work in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi-Ghana. He is also the principal investigator in the 2019 KNUST Research Fund on suicide and suicide ideation among KNUST students. His research interests are: gender, religion, migration, political sociology, conflict and peace studies.

Myroslava Keryk, historian, sociologist, and specialist in field of migration of Ukrainians to Poland defended her doctorate at the GSSR in 2007. Since the Orange Revolution in Ukraine she has been engaged in defending rights of Ukrainian migrants in Poland. Together with other alumnae of the GSSR she established the Ukrainian migrant organization Foundation “Our Choice”. She is now the Head of this of this organization and the Editor in Chief of the newspaper “Nash Vybir.” In her daily work she combines design and implementation of integration activities directed toward Ukrainian migrants in Poland with research projects in the field of migration studies.

Her organization has established the Ukrainian House in Warsaw. This House is both the cultural and integration centre for the Ukrainian diaspora in Warsaw, and also a meeting point for Ukrainians and Poles, providing a home for their common projects