The purpose of our project is to determine how to strengthen transnational cooperation between towns in remote regions and develop local participation mechanisms in order to better harmonise sustainable policies and practices in such locations.<

To this end, we have performed a comparative analysis of the decision-making processes at play in the area of sustainable development in seven towns of the European Arctic: Rovaniemi and Kolari (Finland), Tromsø (Norway), Kiruna and Luleå (Sweden), Akureyri (Iceland), and Nuuk (Greenland, Denmark). We have also looked at their sustainable urban development activities in the transnational dimension.

fot. Michał Łepecki, dr hab. Michał Łuszczuk, prof. UMCS The project rests on the assumption that urban development in remote regions is shaped, to a varying degree, by local, regional and national politics, but also by international initiatives, such as the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development or the Paris Agreement signed within the framework of the UN Convention on Climate Change.

Based on the idea of interactive management, we have set out to test a hypothesis that urban development in the Arctic will be more sustainable if the positions of local stakeholders are reflected in the decision-making process and policies are aligned across the national and regional levels. On the other hand, the multilateral management approach will allow us to determine to what extent transnational cooperation has served as an effective instrument to support sustainable urban development in the towns in question. fot. Michał Łepecki, dr hab. Michał Łuszczuk, prof. UMCS

Our research goes beyond the current state of knowledge in the field, since its main focus is on the obstacles and opportunities for the growth of local participation and greater transnational cooperation in remote regions, i.e. issues that are often given short shrift in mainstream research. Our project will help explain the differences in attitude between town authorities and residents and show how sustainable urban development can be more effectively aligned with local needs and policies, as well as global trends.

Our interdisciplinary team consists of the following researchers: Katarzyna Radzik-Maruszak and Michał Łuszczuk from the Marie Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin, Dorothea Wehrmann and Jacqueline Götze from the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in Bonn and Arne Riedel from the Ecologic Institute in Berlin.

Even though the project has encountered many challenges that have made fieldwork impossible (the COVID pandemic) and a complex international situation that has made online interviews difficult, our work has been progressing steadily and, more importantly, in a great atmosphere. The bulk of our data will come from interviews with local stakeholders, i.e. residents, entrepreneurs, civil society organisations, local authorities and administration officials in seven towns of the European Arctic.

Our project enjoys the support of our home institutions, but also European and American researchers, who have weighed in on our data and analyses. In May 2022, we managed to organise a research symposium in Bonn in order to discuss the preliminary results of our virtual fieldwork study. We continue to take active part in international conferences (especially those held online) and publish new data in academic papers. The final product of the project will be a monograph published by Routledge. This, however, is only the beginning and we are already planning for new projects.

The centennial of the Great War has provided a pretext for the emergence of new forms of commemoration. One hundred years after its end, the First World War now attracts new interpretations with a profound ethical and affective potential. Former colonial empires, such as France and Great Britain, have finally paid tribute to the soldiers of colour recruited from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, who were deliberately blotted out of Eurocentric archives in the aftermath of the hostilities. Importantly, in the years leading up to and during the centennial, many novels and short stories were published that depicted the war as experienced specifically by colonial troops and communities. These texts have yet to be critically studied. The purpose of the project is to collect, interpret and analyse selected works of literature devoted to the First World War, published in English and French in the 21st-century, which capture the perspective of colonial troops and/or delve into the interactions between the soldiers of European origin and those from the colonies. fot. Michał Łepecki, prof. dr hab. Anna Branach-Kallas

The following research hypotheses will be tested: (1) the authors of the short stories and novels in question depict war trauma, which becomes an important point of reference for the identity processes underway in the 21st century; (2) the authors trace a line of continuity between WWI and previous and later outbreaks of violence; and (3) in their works, WWI serves as a catalyst for the struggle for national independence in various parts of the British and French empires. A number of questions arise: How do these authors depict the lived experience of the soldiers of colour during the war? By commemorating the events of a century ago, do they aim to call for forgiveness and forgetting or, on the contrary, protest against collective amnesia? How do they depict the issue of race and racism? What stance do they take vis-à-vis the legacy of colonial stereotypes? Can the memory of WWI be decolonized? And if so, how?

The corpus I have put together thus far consists of more than ten works published in France, Great Britain, the United States, Algeria, South Africa and Martinique around the centennial of the Great War. The most important among them are: Galadio (2010) by Didier Daeninckx, Le bataillon créole (guerre de 1914-1918) (2013) by Raphaël Confiant, A God in Every Stone (2014) by Kamila Shamsie, Dancing the Death Drill (2017) by Fred Khumalo, Frère d’âme (2018) by David Diop, and Afterlives (2020) by Abdulrazak Gurnah. fot. Michał Łepecki, prof. dr hab. Anna Branach-Kallas

The methodology of the project combines postcolonial theory, memory and trauma studies, and political philosophy, as well as contemporary historical research into WWI. The interdisciplinary approach allows ample light to be shed on why and how the trauma of WWI has become an important point of reference for postcolonial identity in various cultural contexts.  The comparative perspective, in turn, helps unravel the tangle of similarities and differences between the traumatic war experiences lived by different ethnic and racial groups, as well as between earlier and later conflicts and their literary depictions.

The results of the project have thus far been presented at conferences in Great Britain, France, Spain and Poland, as well as published in Memory Studies, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of War and Culture Studies, Orbis Litterarum and other journals. A monograph is also underway.

Strong interactions are among the most important issues in contemporary physics. The strongest forces we know of to date, they occur between elementary particles such as quarks and gluons. In the world around us, quarks and gluons are normally trapped inside protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. fot. Michał Łepecki, prof. dr hab. Marek Gaździcki

It is commonly accepted, however, that at extremely high densities, much greater than those of atomic nuclei, matter can exist in a state known as quark-gluon plasma, in which quarks and gluons move around freely. Does plasma exist in nature? What are the features of the phase transition between low-density, strongly-interacting matter, where quarks and gluons are confined, and the state of quark-gluon plasma? Can the properties of strongly-interacting matter be studied in the lab?

The purpose of the project is to answer these questions by studying high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions in cooperation with an international research team, NA61/SHINE. The team performs its measurements with the aid of the NA61/SHINE detector of the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. The research project was started and is currently headed by Prof. Dr hab. Marek Gaździcki.

prof. dr hab. Marek Gaździcki przy pracy The project is divided into two parts:

1. Critical structures and protons. The analysis is focused on the production of protons in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions, based on unique data collected by the NA61/SHINE detector for different collision energies and mass numbers.

2. Critical structures and charms. This part is aimed at modernising the NA61/SHINE detector, by developing and constructing a new data collection system to record collisions at a much faster rate than before. Speeds of this magnitude are necessary if we want to measure rarely-produced particles that contain heavy charm quarks.

The first part of the project may directly allow us to discover the properties of transition between the confined state of quarks and gluons to the quark-gluon plasma. The second part paves the way for possible future discoveries, based on the systematic data on the production of charm quarks in collisions between heavy nuclei. The pioneering measurements carried out by NA61/SHINE will be later continued in two newly created labs: FAIR in Germany and J-PARC-HI in Japan.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that roasted coffee seeds contain not only bioactive substances with an overall positive effect on health, but also potentially harmful compounds, such as 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF) and acrylamide (AM). On the other hand, the polyphenols found in coffee considerably limit the pathogenesis of many modern chronic lifestyle diseases. The main goal of the project was to assess the health-boosting properties of coffee ingredients on physico-chemical and cell line models; the purpose was to determine their physiologically achievable levels and impact on selected signalling pathways and, subsequently, identify the specific coffee extracts and fractions that show the greatest beneficial health effects when digested and absorbed in the gastrointestinal system.

dr inż. Joanna Grzelczyk przy pracy, fot. Michał Łepecki In order to achieve that objective, we prepared green, light- and dark-roasted coffee seed extracts from the Arabica and Robusta species and isolated fractions containing different polyphenol groups, free or bound with Maillard reaction products (MRP), as well as selected low-molecular MRPs, including AM and 5-HMF. These extracts and fractions were then subjected to in vitro enzymatic digestion with or without selected strains of probiotic lactic acid bacteria. We measured the absorption of polyphenols from the extracts or fractions in question in a model system consisting of a single layer of enterocytes, followed by the molecular modelling of these compounds via docking and calorimetric simulations, using body enzymes and receptors. The results of the modelling experiments were compared with cellular model assessments in order to confirm the activation of selected metabolic pathways in a more complex biological system. We identified the extracts and fractions that showed the greatest beneficial effect on cells after digestion and absorption and determined their most beneficial physiological concentrations, corresponding to specific coffee intake levels.

dr inż. Joanna Grzelczyk przy pracy, fot. Michał Łepecki The concentration of free polyphenols was observed to rise as they broke away from more complex structures, mainly in the large intestine, during the digestion of coffee extracts/fractions in the simulated GI tract. The presence of probiotic bacteria contributed to an increase in the levels of free polyphenols derived from chlorogenic acids, with high activity observed in the lower sections of the GI tract. Docking simulation studies of interactions and affinities with selected body enzymes and receptors showed that the latter created stable complexes with bioactive coffee compounds, with coffee ingredients competitively binding to enzyme/receptor active sites. When coffee extracts and fractions were digested in vitro, their affinity with enzymes/receptors, as analysed with the ITC method, increased in comparison with undigested material. This suggests that, when consumed, coffee extracts and fractions may effectively inhibit the activity of enzymes such as: acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, monoaminoxidase A, and topoisomerase II, or regulate the activity of the PPAR receptor. Among the samples studied in our in vitro research on cell lines, the highest bioactivity levels were observed for green coffee extracts, including chlorogenic acid fractions, which exhibited cytoprotective properties, protecting our model enterocytes (Caco-2 and HT29), nerve cells (SH-SY5Y), and pancreatic cells (MIN6) against the induced oxidative stress that contributes to carcinogenesis. They reduced the activity of cellular β-secretase, which may prevent the formation of β-amyloid plaque that damages nerve cells. Coffee ingredients were also observed to reduce the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines by differentiated adipocytes (3T3-L1) and stimulate GSIS, which may contribute to the maintenance of metabolic homeostasis. At the same time, elevated coffee compound levels induced cell death via apoptosis, which confirmed their anti-cancer properties.

Qualitative research (case studies) and quantitative studies (surveys) have revealed the organisational and environmental factors that may have a strategic impact on power asymmetry between the two parties of a B2B relationship. Our research took the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises working with large international entities and covered various sectors, characterised by different levels of internationalisation, including B2B transport providers, furniture manufacturers and material suppliers for national and international corporations. The international pandemic crisis that erupted during the project created an additional context for our conceptual and empirical investigations. fot. Michał Łepecki, prof. dr hab. Maciej Mitręga

fot. Michał Łepecki, prof. dr hab. Maciej Mitręga Our research suggests that SMEs can effectively boost their economic results in cooperation with larger strategic partners by relying on specific skills that can be developed in different management areas. On the one hand, as they enter into asymmetric power relations with large foreign buyers, SMEs should adapt to their requirements, because this is the only way to learn, i.e. shore up their skills and assets in the area of management and production technology. On the other, they should strive to strengthen their independent position within international supply chains, which requires the ability to diversify their buyer portfolio over time by actively searching for new partners and reassessing existing relationships. Our research suggests that this ability is severely limited in situations of market crisis, especially for service providers who have not yet built a recognisable brand. However, even then, their economic position vis-à-vis large players can still be enhanced via effective negotiation skills. Our research suggests that SMEs should develop different skillsets at different stages of their international market activities. Initially, their focus should be on meeting the requirements of strategic buyers; over time, however, they should move on to invest in their own brand and technology, which may gradually improve their position in international supply chains.

Funded by the National Science Centre under the SONATA 8 call, entitled “Tiwanaku: using genetic methods to explore the origin, characteristics and population changes of a pre-Columbian Lake Titicaca culture”, our project was carried out in 2015-2021 by a scientific consortium formed by the Museum and Institute of Zoology, PAS and the Department of History of the University of Warsaw. The project focused on the Tiwanaku Culture, which flourished in the Lake Titicaca basin in what is now Bolivia and Peru between the 5^th and 11^th centuries CE, ranking as one of the greatest pre-Incan civilisations of America. Unfortunately, because the culture did not develop writing and many centuries have passed since its disappearance, everything we know about the people who created it, their customs and beliefs, is based on what survives of Tiwanaku’s imposing buildings, ceramics and other artifacts, as well as on human and animal remains found at settlement sites. Even though we know quite a lot about the material culture of the Tiwanaku, information about their origin and diversity, as well as any population changes over time, is limited to guesswork, in accordance with the maxim that “pots are not people”, which highlights the fact that similarities and differences in material culture do not always go hand in hand with population stability or change. fot. Michał Łepecki, dr Martyna Molak-Tomsia

The purpose of the project was to collect high-resolution genetic information from individuals whose remains were excavated at Tiwanaku sites. To this end, we employed state-of-the-art lab analysis and bioinformatic methods normally used for scarce and degraded DNA from skeleton fossils. This allowed us to obtain genomic information from 13 individuals from sites associated with the Tiwanaku culture, including eight from its political and ceremonial centre, four from a remote residential enclave and one from a Tiwanaku colony, as well as, for comparative purposes, four from the Coropuna region. Our research suggests that the inhabitants of the Lake Titicaca basin were a genetically homogeneous group that did not undergo any significant population changes. In contrast, the ceremonial centre of the Tiwanaku seems to have attracted newcomers from remote regions, in some cases from as far as the Amazon. In contrast to other hypotheses, put forward based on the sacrificial remains found at the ceremonial centre, these visitors did not come there on a pilgrimage, nor were they forcibly brought as war captives. They came there to settle, as evidenced by the presence of mixed-ancestry remains, i.e. the descendants of locals and newcomers. fot. Michał Łepecki, dr Martyna Molak-Tomsia

However, human remains found on the Akapana ritual site, which date back to a later, final period, already show an entirely local genome, which suggests that the far-reaching influence of the Tiwanaku culture had waned in the run up to its ultimate disappearance. Research conducted within the framework of the project provides important insights into the organisation of complex primitive societies that formed out of scattered, independent settlements. While we may never know the processes that led to the formation of these complex societies in full, studying their earliest forms is one of the few ways we have at our disposal to better understand the very roots of civilisation.

Current debates on environmental protection and the treatment of high natural value forests in Europe often invoke the concept of a primeval forest. Different interpretations of this idea are frequently used to justify the intensive exploitation of areas that are not considered to be virgin, natural or primeval. Our contemporary idea of the primeval forest, however, is a product of several centuries of evolution, in which an important role was played by the interest taken by the European scientific and cultural community in the Białowieża Forest and the European bison in the 18^th century. fot. Michał Łepecki, dr hab. Tomasz Samojlik

The purpose of this international project (with principal investigators based in Poland and Lithuania, and contractors in France and Russia) was to chart the evolution of the idea of a primeval forest and trace the perception of the Białowieża Forest and the European bison in European culture and science in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Archival and museum research, as well as literature surveys, carried out in Poland and beyond, allowed us to explore a variety of different sources (archival documents, research papers and popular science publications, hunting press releases, museum exhibits, publications, artworks).

The idea of a primeval or virgin forest dates back to a debate on the destruction of forests in the 18^th century in France. At the beginning of the 19^th century, the concept made it into the vocabulary of German Romanticism, which associated it with the roots of German exceptionalism. Concepts such as “primeval forest”, “virgin forest” and “natural forest”, however, long had no clear definition, let alone a designate. The designate only appeared later, following the “rediscovery” of Lithuanian forests, and especially the Białowieża Forest, at the end of the 18^th century. Targeted at scientists and the general public alike, descriptions of the Białowieża Forest either directly or indirectly referred to it as “primeval”, although it was not usually taken to mean it was completely untouched by man. The perception of Białowieża also changed over time; first dominated by folk beliefs, it was later supplemented by the reports of travellers who had traversed the “Lithuanian forests” (a shorthand for forests that were wild, vast and, most importantly, not exploited by man), only to become the subject of scientific research in the strict sense at the turn of the 18^th/19^th centuries. fot. Michał Łepecki, dr hab. Tomasz Samojlik

The Białowieża Forest largely owed its high-profile status to its last lowland population of the European bison. The recognition of the exceptional nature of this species was a complex process, which we traced on the basis of selected visual depictions created from the 16^th to the end of the 19^th century. The growing number of available illustrations of the European bison, the growth of our knowledge about the species and the wide distribution of bison exhibits in European museums all contributed to the success of the campaign to save this iconic species after its extinction in 1919.

Discussions about the primeval forest and the European bison also helped raise awareness of Polish and Lithuanian nature and culture in Western Europe. The debates were not limited to academic papers, but pervaded the culture at large, making appearances in literature, poetry, theatre, painting and later also in photography and film. The subject thus became an important element in the dissemination of natural knowledge among the general public throughout Europe.