My name is Julia Lewandowska and I hold a Ph.D. in Cultural and Religious Studies from the University of Warsaw (2016, summa cum laude). Since 2017, I am the Associate Professor at the Faculty ‘Artes Liberales’ at the same institution.
I am a specialist in women’s conventual culture, which I approach from literary studies, cultural studies, history of religion and philosophy due to my interdisciplinary background. I publish in Spanish, English, Polish and Portuguese, which increases the impact of my work, but also addresses the strategy of linguistic diversity in humanities publications.
I have published articles in journals such as Women’s Writing (Routledge), Studia Aurea, Temas Americanistas or Teksty Drugie, as well as edited books’ chapters with publishers such as Brill, Brepols, Iberoamericana, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Peter Lang, Renacimiento, among others. My monograph Escritoras monjas. Autoridad y autoría en la escritura conventual femenina de los Siglos de Oro (Iberoamericana-Vervuert 2019) has been recognised with national and international awards (Polish Association of Hispanists for Best Monograph in Cultural Studies, History and Literature of the Biennium 2019-2020; Victoria Urbano Prize 2020 Honourable Mention). Its main contribution to the field has been to provide a representative corpus of unknown Spanish nun writers and unpublished manuscript and old-print sources, and to establish an innovative methodology for analysing the texts and contexts of nuns’ writing through the first typology of authorial models of religious women writers. Among my recent publications I would like to highlight the article ‘Communitas y auctoritas: repensar la comunidad religiosa femenina de la alta modernidad. Caso de Ana Francisca Abarca de Bolea (O. Cist., 1602-ca. 1686) y las Cistercienses de Casbas’ (Studia Áurea. Revista de Literatura Española y Teoría Literaria del Renacimiento, 16, 2022: 15-34), which is a theoretical-interpretive approach (driving on community studies and the critical thought of M. Segarra, R. Esposito and J. Butler) to the notion of the early modern female religious community as a strategic unity and discursive instrument, analysed through the case of Ana Francisca Abarca de Bolea (O. Cist., ca. 1602-1686) and the Cistercians of the Villa de Casbas.
I am currently leading the project The Mother Tongue. Textuality, Authority, and Community in the post-Teresian Female Monasticism (ca. 1562-1700) (PI, National Science Centre, Poland), dedicated to the analysis of the textual production of the ‘spiritual daughters’ of Teresa de Jesús and the impact of their thought on the post-conciliar Europe. I am also a member of the research team of two international projects: Fastos, simulacros y saberes en la América Virreinal at the ILLA CCHS Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (dir. Judith Farré Vidal) and Prácticas culturales y discurso epistolar de las mujeres españolas de la primera Edad Moderna (BIESES 7) of the UNED. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (dir. Nieves Baranda Leturio). Since 2021 I am co-editor of the Brepols Publishers series Women in Christianity. A Cultural History of Women Religious from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period.
I am also systematically lecturing on the topic of my research, which addresses the need to expand the women’s intellectual history field to a wider research community, with 19 invited lectures and talks delivered since 2019. I have also participated in 25 international conferences between 2011 and 2025, including in Naples, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Warsaw, Funchal (Madeira), Seville, and Valencia and I have co-organized 13 international conferences and seminars in Italy, Spain and Poland, including the most recent International Seminar ‘Mujeres religiosas más allá de los bordes: dinámicas de producción, circulación y adaptación cultural entre el viejo y el nuevo mundo (siglos XVI a XVIII)’ co-organized with Dr Alejandra Fuentes (U. Chile) (International Congress of AHILA). The aim of this international seminar was to bring together international experts on women religious history and promote dialogue and new lines of research on the role that women´s monasticim played in the processes of cultural transfer between the Mediterranean and the colonial American world (Naples, Italy 2-6/09/24).
My research interests include modern women’s history and thought, the literary culture of women’s monasticism, theology, rhetoric and the history of emotions in religious discourses.