In memoriam Prof. dr hab. Elżbieta Tarkowska (1944-2016)

The RESCuE team is mourning Professor dr hab. Elżbieta Tarkowska, member of the RESCuE scientific advisory board, who died March 3rd, 2016 in Warsaw. Elżbieta Tarkowska was an oustanding sociologist and cultural anthropologist, co-founder of the Polish school of research on the collective memory, passionately engaged in the study on poverty and social exclusion. Having been a professor committee and scientific council member for Sociology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and director of the Maria-Grzegorszewska-Academy, as well as member and advisor of numerous relevant NGOs, she was a brillant, internationally renowned academic, a public intellectual in the sociopolitical field of anti poverty and anti exclusion politics, and a researcher working very precisely and scrutinuously with any kind of empirical source. Her academic and social committments awarded her the Golden Cross of Merit of the Polish president in 2010. It would probably use a book of its own to adequately sum up her scientific work of about 30 books and more than 320 journal and book articles, so let me just mention her dissertation on Durkheim, Mauss and Levi-Strauss (1973), understood as a conceptual development, as well as her habilitation on time and society (1987), which both place her at the cutting edge of European social thinking of her time.

We are very proud and grateful that Elżbieta Tarkowska accepted our invitation to join the RESCuE project’s scientific advisory board in 2014. Like any of her committments she took it very seriously, but in a light and friendly way. So she used to join the RESCuE meetings long before the advisory board sessions actually began, just listening to the young researchers presentations and field experiences, taking notes, matching herself carefully into informal conversations, bringing along a good reading piece from her own research, giving advice in the best imagineable way. We have lost not only an extremely experienced voice in our scientific advisory board, but also a very open minded, supportive and helpful colleague and friend. We will keep her in our memories and hearts.

Prof. dr hab. Kazimiera Wódz (Leader of the Polish RESCuE Team)
Prof. dr Peter Ester (Chairman of the RESCuE Scientific Advisory Board)
PD Dr. Markus Promberger (RESCuE Coordinator)