Maria Lewicka

Maria Lewicka is professor in psychology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń,Poland. Her background is in social and environmental psychology and her current research interests are focused on theories of place, place identity, place attachment, and place memory. One of her research lines involves studies in collective memory of cities that changed their state belonging and therefore population after WWII, located in Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. For her research in place attachment and place memory she was awarded a prestigious award by the Foundation for Polish Science. At present she coordinates research project focused on the issue of the essentialist and anti-essentialist meanings of places as related to people’s reactions to the physical and social transformation of places. Her approach is clearly interdisciplinary, combining theories drawn from humanities and social sciences (human and regional geography, sociology, history) with theories and rigorous methodology of social psychology, both survey and experimental. She publishes in environmental and social psychological journals.