Ewa Ochman

My research focuses on the twentieth-century history of Central and Eastern Europe, with particular attention to state-sponsored memory, the commemoration of war, population displacement, borderlands, and ethnic minorities. My current project examines post-communist de-commemoration in Poland and Eastern Europe, using street renaming as a lens through which to explore how societies confront and negotiate contested pasts in the spaces they inhabit. 

The project approaches de-communisation as a mode of governance aimed at regulating collective memories and defining the boundaries of legitimate historical interpretation. But it is equally concerned with what symbolic change feels like on the ground - how renaming practices reshape everyday spatial routines, emotional attachments, and sense of belonging. Drawing these threads together, the project also interrogates the normative foundations of democratic memory politics, asking questions about public consent, procedural legitimacy, and local dissent in the transformation of shared landscapes. 

I also serve on the committee of the Polish Studies Group (PSG) at the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES). The PSG is an interdisciplinary forum that brings together researchers working in Polish studies to promote critical debate in the field and to advance the place of Polish studies within British academia. For more information, visit the PSG website.

Title of project: Cultural Heritage and Street Renaming: Perspectives from the Polish Community. 

The project takes my research on commemorative street naming into the Polish community in Greater Manchester and Lancashire. Street names are more than just labels for locations; they carry significant historical, cultural, and social importance. They preserve the historical memory of a local or national community, reflect the cultural identity and can provide a sense of belonging. At the same time, they can be sites of contestation and conflict over identity and memory.  The project aims to inspire young people from the Polish Supplementary Schools to engage in conversations about the ongoing struggles over street naming and renaming in both Poland and the UK. Exploring the history of Polish and British streetscapes offers an opportunity to understand the historical differences between the two countries and provides new perspectives on the cultural heritage of Polish migrant communities in the UK and the diverse origins of these communities.

Postgraduate Opportunities

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who want to research contemporary Polish history and Polish-Jewish relations. I am also happy to supervise research in areas of social and cultural memory with a particular focus on politics of memory and identity in central and eastern Europe, post-socialism and migration and population displacement.

Current doctoral supervision

Catalina Catana, Identity Dynamics in Moldova: Exploring the Interplay of Soviet Legacies, European Aspirations, and Geo-Political Realities (co-supervisor, with Vera Tolz) (President’s Doctoral Scholarship Award).

Viktoriia Svyrydenko, Narrating the Imperial Past: Public Space and the Politics of Memory in Post-Soviet Ukraine (co-supervisor, with Vera Tolz) (ESRC).

Former PhD research students

Dmitrijs Andrejevs: Contested Monuments and Their Afterlives: The V.I. Lenin Monumentin Post-Soviet Riga (first supervisor, with Olga Ultrugashewa) (2022 completion).

Anna Glew: The Commemorative Activity of Ordinary People in Central Ukraine after the Euromaidan (first supervisor, with Olga Onuch) (2022 completion).

Iwona Skorbilowicz: The Polish Writers' Union in Gomułka's Polish People's Republic, 1956-1970 (co-supervisor, with Vera Tolz) (2020 completion).

Dominika Cholewinska-Vater: Contested Loyalties in War: Polish-Jewish Relations within the Anders Army (first supervisor, with Jean-Marc Dreyfus) (2019 completion). 

Aneta Jarzebska: Transgressing the Borders of Gallery Space. Subversive Practices of Alternative Art Galleries in East Germany and Poland of the 1970s (co-supervisor, with Matthew Philpotts) (2018 completion).

Jan Gryta: Remembering the Holocaust and the Jewish Past in Kraków, 1980-2013 (first supervisor, with Cathy Gelbin) (2016 completion).

Stuart Cunningham: Wends and the Wende: Modern German Unification (1989-90) and the Sorbs (co-supervisor, with Stefan Berger) (2013 completion). 

Ewa Stanczyk, Contact Zone Identities: Lemkivshchyna in the Poetry of Jerzy Harasymowicz (co-supervisor, with Stephen Hutchings) (2010 completion).

Membership of doctoral committees

Sophie Stanford, Transitional Justice or Cold War Manipulation? Situating Redress for Japanese Internment Within the Context of US Foreign Policy

Katarzyna Nowak, Reshaping Bodies, Behaviours and Minds: Polish Displaced Persons in Refugee Camps after World War II (2018 completion).

Alina Rzepnikowska, Convivial Cultures in Multicultural Societies: Narratives of Polish Migrants in Britain and Spain (2016 completion).

Iryna Clark, The Mediation of the Concept of Civil Society in the Belarusian Press, 1991-2010. (2015 completion).

Ksenija Kolerovic, The Vlachs and The Serbian Primary School (1878-1914): An Example of Serbian Nation-Building (2014 completion).

Justyna Drobnik-Rogers, The Theatre Practice of Krzysztof Warlikowski or Disclosing ‘the Other’ in Polish Theatre post-1989 (2012 completion).

Christopher Lash, Moving West: The Transfer of Kresy Poles to Post-Yalta Poland, Urban Reconstruction and Post-war Relief: 1944-8 (2010 completion).

Other teaching information

Russian and East European History, Cultural History of Modern War, Holocaust Studies, Nationalism in Eastern Europe, Collective Memory and Commemorations, and Polish Language at all levels.

My academic background spans Polish studies and contemporary history. I completed an MA in Polish Studies, specialising in Theatre Studies, at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, before pursuing a PhD in Contemporary History at the European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford. I subsequently held an Early Career Leverhulme Fellowship (2006-2008) and an RCUK Research Fellowship in Russian and East European Studies (2008-2013) at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, before joining the Department of History at the University of Manchester in 2017. 

2008-2013 RCUK Academic Fellowship for the project: 
"The Second World War and Commemoration in Poland's Borderlands and Diaspora Communities"

2006-2008 Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship for the project: 
"The Second World War and commemoration in Poland post-1989"

• Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies
• British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies
• Memory Studies Association