The Nowa Huta Study began in 1992 when Jerzy Knapik, then recently-appointed
Director of Huta Sendzimira, responded positively
to an enquiry about locating a research project at the steel plant. The aim of the research project was to compare health in different social groups over time.
The research project was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council for three years and was entitled Health and Economic Change in Poland.
The research was based on personnel data relating to the entire Huta Lenina workforce of 1973. In this way, a historical cohort
of about 35,000 steelplant workers was created, whose vital status can be traced over time. So far, it has been possible to follow the health effects for different
social groupings, in particular manual and non manual workers as well as workers of manual worker and rural origin, of the changes that have taken place between 1973 and 2000.
Since that first project, the research has diversified to form a programme of interlinking projects – collectively named The Nowa Huta Study. The projects employ
ethnograpic and historical approaches
to trace social change in Nowa Huta. Interviews recorded as part of the research date back to 1993. Focus group interviews were carried out with 92 current
and former steelplant employees in 1998-99.
The conceptual framework underpinning the empirical work being carried out in the research programme was initially outlined in 2000
paper entitled ‘Rethinking Transition: Globalism, Gender and Class’. This paper is reprinted in: Joan W. Scott and Debra Keates (eds.)
Going Public: Feminism and the Shifting Boundaries of the Private Sphere, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
At present, the main project in the programme is funded by the Wellcome Trust. This project focuses
on historical understandings and practices relating to work, health, and the production of steel in Poland since 1949. It draws on archival research in the Steelplant,
in the State Archives in Kraków, Warsaw and Katowice, and in the Institute for Occupational Medicine (Instyut Medycyny Pracy) in Sosnowiec. Wide-ranging interviews
have also been carried out as part of the research.
The Nowa Huta Study is managed by Dr Peggy Watson at the
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge. |
The funders of the Nowa Huta Study are:
- THE WELLCOME TRUST
, Project Title: Risks, Rights and Responsibility: A Comparative Study of Occupational Health and Metal Manufacture in Poland 1949-1989.
- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
, Project Title: Lay Theories of Health Risk During Political and Economic Change in Poland.
- THE BRITISH ACADEMY
, Understanding Health in Eastern Europe: Mortality Differences in Nowa Huta.
- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
, Seminar Competition. Two Year International Seminar Series entitled: Health in Economies in Transition.
- THE ISAAC NEWTON TRUST, TRINITY COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
, Project title: Understanding the East-West Mortality Divide in Europe.
- THE JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION
, (Chicago, USA) Research and Writing Grant Program for Individuals. Project title: Civil Society and the Mobilisation of Difference in Eastern Europe.
- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL Project Title:
Health and Economic Change in Poland.
- NUFFIELD FOUNDATION
, Understanding the East-West Health Divide: Why Has Rising Mortality in Eastern Europe been Concentrated Among the Non-Married?
|