Karolina Szpyrko

Karolina Szpyrko is an interdisciplinary scholar and lecturer in media and communications at Regent’s University London. She holds a PhD in Media and Communications from the University of Sussex and an MA in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick. 

Her academic expertise spans across social sciences, digital humanities, and non-traditional modes of knowledge production. Specialising in the evolving value of activist labour within contemporary feminist movements, her research focuses on notions of mediatised labour and the juridification of human rights activism.

• 2017-2023 PhD in Media and Communication
  University of Sussex, England 
  The thesis explores the evolving value of activist labour within the contemporary feminist movement in Poland, which began in 2016 with mass protests against abortion law restrictions. It investigates how the value of activist labour is centralized, decentralized, connected, and restricted. Through empirical research (28 interviews), the study examines the complex relationship between two facets of activist labour: embodied, situated experience, on one hand, and narrative and rhetorical tools employed in activist battles, on the other.
• 2013 - 2014 MA in Culture management in cooperation with the European Union regions, Culture promotion / Distinction 
  University of Wroclaw, Poland
• 2012 - 2013 MA in Film and Television Studies / Distinction
  University of Warwick, England
  MA thesis developed an innovative methodology to explore the phenomenon of Jack Smith’s cinematic works transforming in between public and private spaces.
• 2008 - 2012 BA (Hons) with 2:1 class in Applied Social Sciences 
  The Robert Gordon University, Scotland
  BA thesis was sociological analysis of gender representations in the French and Czecho-Slovak New Waves. 

Fellowships    

• 01-07 2020: Doctoral Fellow (placement), UNESCO, International Programme for Development of Communication

Work experience  

• 2019-2024: School Tutor, University of Sussex
• 05/2018-10/2019: General editor, Excursions - postgraduate journal, University of Sussex
• 09/2018-08/2019: SAGE Research Hive Scholar, University of Sussex Library
• 05/2015-05/2016: Project officer, DA DEE AT, live art festival, Aberdeen
   

Publications

• (Forthcoming, 2026) Activist Labour in Contemporary Social Movements. London: Routledge.
• (Forthcoming, 2025) Szpyrko, K. ‘Woke Work and the Paradox of Activist-Washing Hope: Zalando's "Activists of Optimism" Campaign and the Style of Capitalism in Decline’. In M. Liinason, S. Khosravi Ooryad, and O. Kılıç (eds.), Feminism, LGBTI+ and Hope in a Turbulent Era. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• UNESCO (2025) Journalism, “Fake News” and Disinformation: Handbook for Journalism Education and Training [Dziennikarstwo, „fake news” i dezinformacja: podręcznik dla edukacji i szkoleń dziennikarskich]. Trans. K. Szpyrko and Z. Wiorogórska. Paris: UNESCO.
• (2025) ‘Media as rhetoric figures: countering marginalisation of non-metropolitan feminist activism in Poland’, in Aslı Kotaman and Gülüm Şener (eds.) Feminist Activism in the Digital Era: Cultural Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
• (2024) Szpyrko, K. ‘Intellectual Property Rights in Polish Feminist Activism: Navigating Identity, Values, and Commodification’. Journal of Media and Rights, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/jmr.v2i1.9
• (2020) ‘9: Fake’, Reflections, Excursions, Vol. 10(2), DOI: https://doi.org/10.20919/exs.10.2020.307    
• (2019) Preface to the volume, Excursions, vol. 9(1), DOI: https://doi.org/10.20919/exs.9.2019.237    
• (2018) Review: Aristea Fotopoulou - Feminist Activism and Digital Networks: Between Empowerment and Vulnerability, Excursions 8(1), DOI: https://doi.org/10.20919/exs.8.2018.231

Papers presented    

• 08/09/2023 ‘Digital Fem-washing of War: Olena Zelenska's Vogue Cover and the #sitlikeagirl Campaign as Mediatisations of the Mother Nation Narrative’, British Sociological Association Media Study Group Event: Media at Times of Crisis and Conflict
• 06/09/2023 ‘Intellectual property rights of activism: paradoxes of feminist activist labour’, Feminist Pedagogy of/beyond Borders Kadir Has University, Istanbul
• 29/01/2019 ‘How to stop time: mnemonic resistance for the future for feminist history’, Memory and Movement symposium, the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (PIASt)
• 21-23/06/2018 ‘What does it mean for Polish feminism to exist: Mnemonic Labour Of The Newly Found Polish Feminist Movement’, Women’s Spring: Feminism, Nationalism and Civil Disobedience Conference, UCLAN
• 14-16/09/2015 ‘Queer failing at queerness: images of urban life in the output of The Cinema of Transgression’, III Europen Georgaphies of Sexualities Conference in Rome
• 21/05/2014 ‘Who’s afraid of vagina wolf? everyone’, Gender Roles Conference at the University of Birmingham
• 25-27/05/2014 ‘The Flaming Creature: Jack Smith’s art at the peripheries of modern public and private spheres’, Revolting Peripheries International Conference, University of Bielsko Biala
• 28-29/03/2014 ‘Clandestine feminism and the operation ‘cinema’: a case of Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf’, accompanied by a film screening of Who’s Afraid Of Vagina Wolf (2013), a film by Anna Margarita Albelo/ 85 mins, Militant Feminisms in Art and Politics symposium, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick
• 08/12/2013 ‘Jack Smith And The Ugliness Of Capitalism’ panel discussion at SpaceStudios in London
• 05-07/09/2013 ‘Queering the Divide: Reconceptualising the Polish Family’, II European Geographies of Sexualities Conference, University of Lisbon

• Social movement studies
• Feminist media studies
• Feminist theory
• Refugee activism studies
• Digital labour studies

• ATGENDER, The European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation
• CHASE Climate Justice Network
• Memory Studies Association
• IMISCOE (Int. Migration Research Network)

Experience teaching the following modules:

• Emerging Technologies (PGT)
• Research Innovations and Digital Methods (PGT)
• Media Research Design and Methods (PGT)
• Social Media and Digital Culture (PGT)
• Current Issues in Media and Public Relations (UG)
• Media Production and Content Consumption (UG)
• Political Communications (UG)
• Media Histories and Futures (UG)
• Why We Post: Social Media and Us (UG)
• Communications (UG)
• Analysing Media, Texts, Audiences (UG)
• How to Think in a Post-Truth World (UG)
• How to Create a Social Enterprise (UG)