Dr Joanna Rogóż, a physical anthropologist from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Rzeszów, has been awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. The 18-month fellowship will begin on October 1, 2025, and will be carried out at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig, Germany.

Her research project, titled EXCLUDED/EXPOSED: Exhumation of Marginalized Groups. An Integrated Perspective on the Chances and Challenges of Violence Archaeology, focuses on the archaeology of conflict and violence—often referred to as the archaeology of totalitarianism. This emerging field includes so-called political exhumations, which, through historical sources and archaeological work, reveal not only how victims were killed but also the methods used to conceal their remains.

The fellowship is designed to integrate multiple perspectives on violence in the 20th century, including archaeology (and exhumation), physical anthropology, and memory studies.

https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/bewerben/foerderprogramme/humboldt-forschungsstipendium

https://www.leibniz-gwzo.de/de

The Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship is among the most prestigious international distinctions awarded to scholars worldwide by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, based in Germany.

Photo by Daniel Frymark, from the project “The Archaeology of the Pomeranian Crime of 1939,” funded by the National Science Centre (grant no. UMO-2021/43/D/HS3/00033), project leader: Dr Dawid Kobiałka, Institute of Archaeology, University of Łódź.http://archeologiazbrodnipomorskiej1939.pl/pl/

About Dr Joanna Rogóż

Dr Joanna Rogóż is a physical anthropologist and has served as an assistant professor at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Rzeszów since 2013. She holds a degree from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Her research focuses on the analysis of human skeletal remains spanning from the Neolithic period to the modern era, carried out in close collaboration with archaeologists. She studies both skeletal and cremated remains recovered from single, collective, and mass graves—including crypts and burial sites from the 20th century. She has participated in a scientific expedition to the Nile Delta (Tell el-Farha) and has authored dozens of anthropological reports. Her past projects include the analysis of cremated remains from a Roman-period cemetery in the Czech Republic. She has also received two dedicated grants for the study of cremation burials, including fieldwork in Ukraine.

Dr Rogóż has taken part in archaeological and exhumation work related to World War I and II sites in the Subcarpathian region and Pomerania. In 2024, she participated in the international project “The Archaeology of the Pomeranian Crime of 1939,” which involved the search for and subsequent exhumation of a mass grave containing individuals with intellectual disabilities murdered by Nazi Germans in the autumn of 1939, followed by anthropological analysis of the remains.

She is frequently called upon to serve as an expert witness in the field of anthropology.

In 2015, she was awarded the “Pine Twig” Cultural Prize by the City of Stalowa Wola for co-authoring the book World War I on the San River, edited by A. Garanta (Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola, BERNARDINUM Publishing House, 2014), specifically for her article co-authored with D. Kurek: Exhumation of a World War I Mass Grave in Zdziary (Nisko County), pp. 109–117.

Her academic interests include cremated bones and the use of CT imaging in the study of cremation burials, bone and joint pathologies and trauma, and the archaeology of modern conflicts and contemporary exhumations.