The history of Galicia in recent decades arouses a growing interest among historians, geographers and literary experts. Research on Galicia is being carried out in a number of academic centres of Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Germany, the US and Canada. Geographical and topical dispersion of particular studies should encourage initiatives gathering scholars of various countries and disciplines (historians, geographers, climatologists, literature historians, anthropologists, ethnographers).
Thus, the objective of the project is to establish a research platform "A seminar on the geohistory of Galicia (1772-1918)", an interdisciplinary and international team of scholars undertaking research on the history of Galicia, historical geography and environmental history. The aforementioned platform shall consist of three groups of members and associates.
The first group shall include the team of the platform initiators, comprising 6 employees of the Jagiellonian University, among them four historians (Professor dr hab. Michał Baczkowski, dr hab. Krzysztof Ślusarek, dr hab. Tomasz Kargol, the JU Professor, and dr Adam Świątek) as well as two geographers from the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management (dr Krzysztof Ostafin, dr Jarosław Działek). The aforementioned group shall coordinate the platform's functioning.
The second group shall consist of the platform's permanent associates who confirmed their participation in its undertakings. The party includes scholars from Poland, Austria, Ukraine and the Czech Republic; historians, geographers and archivists. There are 12 people involved: Professor Christoph Augustynowicz (University of Vienna), dr Klemens Kaps (Johanes Kepler University Linz), dr Jindřich Frajer (Palacký University Olomouc), dr Volodymyr Dolinovskyi (the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv), dr Roman Masyk (the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv), dr Rostyslav Melnyk (the Lviv Polytechnic National University), dr hab. Elżbieta Bilska-Wodecka (the JU Institute of Geography and Spatial Management), dr hab. Izabela Sołjan (the Institute of Geography and Spatial Management), dr Justyna Liro (the JU Institute of Geography and Spatial Management at the Jagiellonian University), dr hab. Grzegorz Zamoyski, Professor at (the Rzeszów University of Technology), dr Joachim Popek (the University of Rzeszów), mgr Anna Miklar (an attendant of the doctoral school in the JU Institute of Geography and Spatial Management), dr Łukasz Jewuła (III Liceum Ogólnokształcące in Tarnów).
The third group shall consist of foreign and local associates of the platform who shall be invited to deliver open lectures, lectures within the seminar meetings and to participate in a conference.
Within the research activities of the platform the following academic tasks shall be realised:
The program of the research platform shall focus on the widely understood geohistory, natural, social and economic conditions of the history of Galicia as far as time and space changes are concerned and on examining man intermingling with living and inanimate nature. The platform's issues shall focus on four research questions:
The (natural) landscape of Galicia. Within this subject matter issues concerning spatial diversity of the biotic and abiotic components shall be discussed, in the latitudinal and longitudinal layout as well as with the altitude.
The impact of the landscape upon the social and economic life. The next issue undertaken within the platform's works shall be an analysis of the relations between the landscape of Galicia and the social and economic activity of man, for instance the density and layout of the settlement net and terrain shaping, the influence of natural and landscape conditions upon tourist services, etc.
The cultural landscape of Galicia. The third subject matter of the platform's works shall be an analysis of the cultural landscape, i.e. results of human activity. Those were not regarded as nature but they had impact upon it. In the 19th century the Austrian Partition entered the industrial era. It brought about significant social, political and everyday life consequences, but also took its toll on the natural landscape (industrialization, urbanization, the increase of the role of non-natural conditions of agriculture development, the development of the communication network). Transferring descriptive and statistic data onto maps shall allow to recreate the spatial layout of the social and economic relations.
Geopoetics and geohistory of Galicia. The aforementioned issues, especially the correlations between nature and culture (human activity) did not go unnoticed in the Galician press, literature, journalism, art works, education. We want to draw attention to the relations between the literary and artistic activity and the geographical space within a historical context.
