Leszek Dziêgiel: Polish Kurdologist/Ethnologist

Leszek Dziêgiel: Polish Kurdologist/Ethnologist

Leszek Dziegiel was born in 1931 in a middle class family. His father was a teacher who died in the Nazi concentration camp when he was a teenager. He spent World War II in Lvov (Poland). In 1945 he had to move from Lvov to Katowice (Upper Silesia). There he finished the secondary school in 1950 experiencing political chicanery himself for declining to join the organisation of the communist youth. Due to this pressure, in 1950 he was denied to study history at the Krakow University. He then began to study archaeology and ethnology. In 1955 he received his MA diploma in ethnology with excellent results.

Since he did not decide to join the Polish Communist Party, his application for doctoral studies was rejected and his scientific carrier was blocked temporarily. In 1955-1959 he founded with his friends an illustrated monthly magazine. It was closed by the authorities because of political reasons.

He had to move from Krakow to Upper Silesia. There he worked as a teacher and free lance journalist. After his return to Krakow in 1970 he was offered a post of researcher at the University of Agriculture. Finally he received his Ph.D. diploma at the Krakow University, Faculty of History & Philosophy. In 1977, 1978, and 1980 he did his field research in Iraqi Kurdistan as the member of Polish agro-economic team of experts. His task was anthropological survey of five chosen areas in Dohuk, Sulaimania, and Arbil governorates. He wrote a book in English, "Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan Facing Modernisation" in 1981 (Krakow) and in 1982 he got his habilitation diploma at the Poznan University.

From 1983 he has worked at the Institute of Ethnology as full professor of ethnology and the director (to 1999). Inside the Institute, he has been the head of the Dept. of European and Middle Eastern Studies. He has been also the member of some editorial boards and the all-national Committee of Ethnology. Among his research areas are Political and cultural problems in Kurdistan. Kurdish independence aspirations against the political background of the Near East and Kurdish diaspora in the West. He is co-founder of the Polish-Kurdish Association in Kracow in Poland. Selected Works on Kurdistan
- Rural Community of Contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan Facing Modernisation. Studia i Materia³y Akademii Rolniczej 7, Kraków 1981.
- Traditional food and daily meals in Iraqi Kurdistan today". Ethnologia Polona 7 (1981): 99-113.



- "Hygiene and attention to personal appearance among the Iraqi Kurds". Archiv Orientalni 1.50 (1982): 43-50.

- "Kurdish costumes and their europeanisation". Acta Ethnographica 33.1-4 (1984-85): 89-108.

- "Villages et petites villes kurdes dans l"Irak actuel". Studia Kurdica 1-5. Paris 1988. 127-156.

- "Changes of the contemporary villages in the Near East from the perspective of a Polish ethnologist. Questions and doubts". Ethnologia Polona 17 (1992): 63-69.

- Wêze³ kurdyjski. Kultura-dzieje-walka o przetrwanie (The Kurdian Knot. Culture-History-Struggle for Survival). Kraków 1992. 446 pp.

Address
Prof. dr habil. Leszek Dziegiel
Institute of Ethnology, Jagiellonian University
Grodzka 52, 31-044 Krakow, Poland
http://www.uj.edu.pl/IE/dziegiel.htm