Jerzy Gorzelik

Jerzy Gorzelik is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Arts Studies within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Silesia in Katowice. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wrocław and graduated from Jagiellonian University. His academic work centers on art history with a focus on Central European art, particularly in Upper Silesia from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

His research explores the intersections of art, national and confessional identities, cultural heritage, and collective memory. He investigates how artistic expressions have been used in the discursive construction of imagined communities, especially in contested borderlands like Upper Silesia. His interests include wooden and industrial architecture, sacred art, museum practices, and the role of art in nationalist narratives.

The recent publications highlight a consistent focus on heritage discourse, national identity formation, and the symbolic use of architecture and sculpture in Central Europe. His work analyzes how nationalisms—Polish, German, and Silesian—have instrumentalized art and heritage to legitimize political claims and shape regional identity. Themes such as the postcolonial critique of museum curation, the historiography of art history, and the interplay between Catholicism and nationalism recur across his scholarly output.

Jerzy Gorzelik is actively engaged in public outreach, having conducted lectures, workshops, and educational projects on Silesian art history in collaboration with institutions such as the House of Polish-German Cooperation and the Foundation Dom Modernisty. He has also contributed to academic discourse through platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Google Scholar, and maintains an ORCID profile (0000-0001-6405-9835).