Dr Margaret Amaka Ohia-Nowak is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She is also a lecturer in Women's and Gender Studies (GEMMA) at the University of Łódź, Poland. She is a faculty member of the Black Europe Summer School in Amsterdam. Her work lies at the intersection of academia, civic education and racial justice activism. Since 2009, she has been an advocate for Black, African and Afro-descendant communities in the region and has been involved in numerous initiatives and projects to promote equity, cultural awareness and create spaces for radical community care.

Her work focuses on race and racism in public and private communications in Poland, anti-Black racist discourses, and media representations of Black Africans in Poland. Margaret received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Wrocław, Poland in 2015. She graduated from the Black Europe Summer School in 2010. From 2012 to 2014, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2011 and at City University London, UK in 2012. She was a National Science Centre Fellow from 2011 to 2014. She is the recipient of the Susan Treadwell Award from the Open Society Initiative for Europe.

She recently co-authored the report on the lived experiences of Africans and Afro-descendants in Poland (2022) and the United Nations University report on modern slavery and financial exclusion of diverse men in times of crisis (2024). She has organised numerous seminars on understanding race and racism in contemporary Poland, and co-organised the first Black History Month debate in Poland (2020). She has been featured on several podcasts, including Being a Black Woman in Poland (2021) and Race and Representation (2020). Margaret is the Polish translator of Change Sings by Amanda Gorman. 

She is a co-founder and part of the leadership of the Alliance for Black Justice in Poland. She is the founder and executive director of the Centre for Intersectional Justice in Poland, an organisation that provides training, expertise and consultancy on racial justice and diversity, equity and belonging (clients include the Open Society Foundations, Climate-KIC, Freedom House, Facebook, Pinterest, IBM, Astra Zeneca). She is a board member of the Black Europe Foundation and the Journal for Right-Wing Studies (JRWS). She is part of the community of practice on racialised othering and radical belonging in Europe, launched by the Democracy & Belonging Forum of the Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) at the UC Berkeley. She is a local connector for Central Europe at the Multitudes Foundation.

Selected publications

Bieńkowski M., Winiewski M., Ohia-Nowak M., (2024), Rasizm wobec osób czarnych w Polsce., In: Bulska, D., Winiewski, M., Bilewicz, M. (eds.). Uprzedzenia w Polsce. Postawy a ideologia polityczna. Wydawnictwo Liberi Libri, s. 91-113 https://doi.org/10.47943/lib.9788363487645

Smith Angharad, Vaughn Leona , Toni Cela, Louis Herns Marcelin, Margaret Ohia-Nowak, Charu Hogg and Ronny Marty. 2024 Modern Slavery and Financial Exclusion: Exploring Crisis-Related Risks for Men : UNU-CPR.

Balogun, B., & Ohia-Nowak, M. (2023). Geographies of imagination: why decolonizing Polish children’s classics matters. Cultural Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1177/14744740231191533

Nowak P., Ohia-Nowak M., 2022, Simple language and the natural order of things in modern recruitment (using job advertisements as an example), "Language Guide" 8/2022, pp. 53-63.

Ohia-Nowak M. et al, 2020, Questionnaire: the visual culture of race, "View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture," 28(2020), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2020.28.2314

Ohia-Nowak M., 2020, The word "Murzyn" as a perlocutionary speech act, "Cultural Studies Review" 3, pp. 195-212. doi: 10.4467/20843860PK.20.023.12583

Ohia-Nowak M., 2020, On the language of racism, in Racism in Polish (e-book, in Polish). HOW2, pp. 14-39.

Biegalska A., Maziarz M., Ohia-Nowak M., 2018, A model set of relations between Vocabulary Web synsets and Wikipedia articles, in: PWr e-Statistics Collection. Wroclaw University of Technology Publishing House.

Ohia-Nowak, M. 2016, In Black and White. Reflections from studies about Black people in everyday Polish language and in media discourse in Poland, Africa and Eastern/Central Europe Series, "Africa in Words", 19.12.2016.

Ohia M., 2016, Racism in public discourse in Poland. A preliminary analysis, "Edutainment" 01(2016), pp. 135-149.

Ohia M., 2016, Media narratives about the "other", in Jacek Wasilewski (ed.), Narratives in life. On the group and the individual, Warsaw: Institute of Journalism, University of Warsaw, pp. 17-42.

Ohia M., 2015, Talking about the 'stranger' - opinionated or tabloid? Analysis of press coverage of 'dark-skinned' people in Poland on the example of Simon Mol's and Maxwell Itoya's subjects, in Katarzyna Kubin (ed.), Media in a Diverse Society: ethics, pluralism and equal treatment, Warsaw: Foundation for Social Diversity, pp. 56-96.

Ohia M., 2014, Racist structures. The case of Feston and Wieslaw, in Irina Uchwanova-Szmygowa et al. (eds.), Discourse in academic perspective: materials of the international roundtable, April 3-5, 2009, Minsk, Belarus, Olsztyn: Center for East European Studies, pp. 116-120.

Ohia M., 2013, Mechanisms of racial discrimination in the Polish language system, "Humanistic Review," 5, pp. 93-105.

Ohia M., 2012, New choreography: a new dimension of stage choreography, in Małgorzata Różewicz, Milan Lesiak and Slawomir Bobowski (eds.), Between Film and Theater, University of Wrocław Publishing House, pp. 405-416.
Pietrzak W., Ohia M. 2012, All about why there is no race (conversation), in W. Pietrzak, M. Pietrzak-Uszyńska (eds.), Towards Equality. A selection of texts on equality policy. Wrocław Grapefruit Foundation, pp. 267-281.

Ohia M., 2011, Social exclusion through racial categorization. A comparative test of texts from The Independent and Gazeta Wyborcza, Youth Word, 1/(16)-2/(17) and 3/(18) - 4/(19) pp. 5-18.

Ohia M., 2010, Расистские структуры (на примере случаев Фестона и Веслава), in Дискурс в академической перспективе: материалы Междунар. круглого стола, 3-5 апреля 2009 г., Минск, Беларусь / под общ. ред. И. Ухвановой-Шмыговой и М. Сарновского. - Минск : БГУ, pp. 131-136.
Didactic and popular publications

GRANTS, SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS:

Fulbright Advanced Junior Research Scholarship 2012-2013, President of Wroclaw Scholarship 2012-2013, UC Berkeley Empowering Women of Color Scholarship 2012, EU Human Capital Scholarship 2011-2012, Human Capital Operational Program Research Grant 2012, PRELUDIUM Research Grant National Science Center 2011-2013, Research Grant for Young Investigators of the University of Wroclaw 2011, LLP Erasmus Scholarship 2011-2012, Scholarship of the Rector of the University of Wroclaw 2010-2014, Fellowship of The National Institute for Dutch Slavery and its Legacy 2010, Doctoral Fellowship 2010-2014, First Prize for the best master's thesis of the Performa Foundation 2009.