In September 2026, the EU-URGE international team met in Warsaw for its third Joint Fieldwork. Besides working on the book proposal, it engaged with several municipal institutions that address issues of climate change and ecology, such as the Służew Community Centre, which runs a community garden, the Kamień Pavilion, and the Urban Forests’ Centre for Ecological Education.
We also met with representatives of the Municipal Office for Air Protection and Climate Policy which allowed us to delve into the specifics of Mission 100 engagement by the Warsaw municipal administration.
Two ethnographic walks offered different perspectives on Warsaw’s urban environment. Urban activist and writer Jan Mencwel guided the EU-URGE team along the “wild side” of the Vistula, while a walk along Mokotów’s “climate path,” developed within the ADAPTCITY project, explored how climate adaptation becomes visible in the urban landscape.
A seminar with Małgorzata Owczarska, Magdalena Siemaszko, and Zuzanna Derlacz brought together perspectives from anthropological, artistic, and applied work with rivers, wetlands, and the sea. Their contributions prompted reflections on the fluid and spatially dispersed nature of urgency and on methodological approaches that move beyond anthropocentrism.
Joint Fieldwork participants:
Alexandra Schwell, Johannes Kroeger (Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt)
Saša Poljak Istenič, Tatiana Bajuk Senčar, Nina Vodopivec (ZRC-SAZU, Ljubljana)
Anna Horolets, Renata Putkowska-Smoter, Maria Małanicz-Przybylska, Maja Wróblewska (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw)
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Photos by M. Małanicz-Przybylska and A. Horolets
