We’re six weeks into our fundraiser and we're 66% of the way to our end goal! Thanks to you, our incredible community, 30 generous donors have contributed $3,565, enough to support two PSI scholarships plus one grant. Thank you all so much for your kindness and support!

Your support helps launch careers like Dr. Nicole Freeman’s, whose PSI-funded research on Jewish children in post-Holocaust Poland laid the foundation for a life dedicated to Holocaust education. From archival work in Warsaw to leading initiatives in Miami and Boston, her journey shows how PSI’s investment in rigorous scholarship and public history continues to shape meaningful, far-reaching impact.

Don’t forget that our Bingo Night is tonight! Keep sharing the campaign and help us spread the word about the power of Polish Studies at Ohio State.

PSI Alumni Stories: Dr. Nicole Freeman (2017 PSI Grant Recipient)

Receiving a PSI research grant in 2017 was instrumental in shaping both my academic and professional career. The funding supported my doctoral research on the experiences of Jewish children in Poland after the Holocaust and allowed me to spend critical time at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. This research not only provided the foundation for my dissertation but also deepened my commitment to preserving and sharing the stories of Holocaust survivors with future generations.

Since completing my Ph.D. in 2022, I have dedicated my career to Holocaust education. For the past three years, I served as the Education Director at the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach. I worked closely with Holocaust survivors, teachers, and students to develop meaningful programming that connected historical lessons to contemporary issues of antisemitism and intolerance. I was deeply involved in shaping the historical and interpretive content of its new Education Center, ensuring that it will serve as a hub for learning in South Florida for years to come.

I have been fortunate to return to Poland several times in recent years, including participating in the 80th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz this past January and accompanying high school students as an educator on the March of the Living in April. Standing with students at Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, and sites of the former Warsaw and Krakow ghettos underscored for me how essential it is to equip young people with knowledge and empathy to confront hatred in all its forms.

Today, I am the Education Director for the Holocaust Museum Boston, which is set to open in late 2026. In this role, I am drawing upon the foundation PSI helped provide (research skills, a commitment to rigorous scholarship, and a passion for public history) to build innovative educational programs that will reach students, teachers, and communities across New England. I am profoundly grateful for PSI’s investment in my work and its lasting impact on my career.

We've officially hit the halfway mark! With 25 donors on board and $3,470 raised so far, we’re well on our way to funding two full PSI scholarships and a full PSI grant. Every gift brings us closer to our goal and closer to empowering the next generation of Polish Studies scholars at Ohio State. Thank you for being part of this growing community!

This week, we’re featuring another member of the PSI team, Dr. Angela Brintlinger. Dr. Brintlinger is the current Director of CSEEES and PSI and even received a PSI grant herself back in 2015 to strengthen academic ties between Ohio State and the University of Warsaw’s Collegium Artes Liberales by mentoring students, sharing research, and exploring future collaborations in Polish Studies.

Please share the campaign with your friends, family, and colleagues and encourage them to donate! And for those of you in Columbus, don't forget that you can join us for Bingo Night with PSI on Wednesday, November 12!

CSEEES/PSI Director: Dr. Angela Brintlinger (Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures)

The Polish Studies Initiative gave me the opportunity to build on academic relationships I had made as a Fulbright Scholar in Warsaw in 2013, and it also led to increased collaborations with U of Warsaw faculty in the ensuing years. My primary focus while in Poland in May 2015 was to serve as a scholar in residence at UW’s small liberal arts college which is called Collegium Artes Liberales. I gave some lectures, interacted with faculty, and most importantly interacted with students in the AWE (Academic Writing in English) program which helps future Polish academics learn to present themselves on an international stage. While in Warsaw I was also able to attend the Docs against Gravity documentary film festival at various venues around town. This stimulating environment offers opportunities for a Polish genre I love, the spotkanie or meeting, in this case with the film directors themselves. Watching and listening to the international audience as they interact with filmmakers from all over the world (including Croatia, Finland, Moldova) was an invaluable experience. I also met up with my former MA students from the UW Studium Europy Wschodniej (Center for East European Studies), several of whom are from the Donetsk region of Ukraine, and so I learned of the Russian incursion into Ukraine far in advance of the full-scale invasion of February 2022 and on a human level, hearing about my students’ parents and their home towns.

As we head into the fourth week of our campaign, we're thrilled to share a major milestone: thanks to the generosity of our 20 donors, we can now officially fund one full PSI scholarship AND one full PSI grant! Thank you so much to everyone who helped make this possible. Your support is already shaping future opportunities, and we can't wait to see what experiences your gifts will make possible.

This week's alumni story comes from Sophia Bachman who was a 2024 PSI grant recipient. Sofia is a PhD student in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and recently returned from a Fulbright project in Łódź.

Please continue to share the word about the campaign so that we can reach our end goal of 45 donations! Every gift—no matter how larger or small—make a huge difference. And don't forget to share the news about our Bingo Night with you family, friends, and colleagues. It's a great way to support a good cause while having some fun!

2024 PSI Grant Recipient: Sofia Bachman

The 2024 PSI award enabled me to arrange my 10-month trip to Poland and pay some of the logistics around it. It made a huge difference as I organized flights, the required trip insurance, and visa documentation, along with the required embassy interviews. With the PSI award I didn’t have to worry so much about money and could put my energies into preparing to conduct research. With PSI as the basis, I spent 10 months in Łódź, Poland on the Fulbright program conducting dissertation research. PSI provided me with funds when I really needed them, and I am very grateful; it was challenging to pay for everything before I left. After this year of research, my dissertation chapters are structured, and I am currently editing my work while analyzing the materials and data I collected in-country. This research which PSI enabled has become my entire dissertation, and being in Poland shaped my research in beneficial ways I did not expect. In my professional life, I am maintaining the contacts I made at my host university and through research; many of these contacts I am lucky to call friends, not just colleagues. Being in Poland has changed for the better how I research and how I present to the public. As a graduate student who depends on grants for everything—to be able to conduct research, attend conferences, and even study some subjects, I feel very strongly about advocating for continued support of the PSI award. It cannot be overstated how important this is. Thank you very much to all the people who have donated and supported PSI.

As a part of this year’s PSI fundraising campaign, we’re hosting a special bingo night! We’d love to see you all there if you can join us. Please see below for more information and feel free to share with any friends, family, colleagues, or people who love Polish culture and want to help out a good cause!

Bingo Night with PSI

Wednesday, November 12, 5:30-7:00 PM, 160 Enarson Classroom Building

Join Ohio State’s Polish Studies Initiative (PSI) for a night of bingo! Each round will spotlight PSI’s programs and alumni, with the chance to win fun surprises. Light snacks and beverages will be provided. All proceeds from the night will support PSI’s annual grant and scholarship competition. 

How to Join Bingo Night

You can purchase bingo cards by donating to our PSI Buckeye Funder. Please leave a note mentioning that you will be attending the bingo night in the “Comments” section of the donation page. Cash and check donations will also be accepted on site. 

Donate to Play!

Bingo Card Pricing

• “Playing for Polish Studies”: $15 
  • For nonstudent faculty, staff, and community members. Includes 1 card per game.
• “In It to Win It”: $20 
  • For the serious players! Includes 3 cards per game.
• Students: $5 
  • For undergraduate and graduate students. Includes 1 card per game.
• Extra Card: $5 each 

If you have questions or run into issues, please email PSI Program Coordinator Alicia Baca at baca.31@osu.edu. 

Friends of PSI, if you happen to be in Columbus next week, be sure to mark your calendars for our 2025 PSI Lecture featuring 2024 and 2025 scholarship recipient Lauren Hayden (Department of Anthropology). We are so excited to hear about how PSI has helped inform her research and teaching while at the Slavia Foundation Field School in Giecz. This is an excellent chance for you to see the impact that PSI has on the academic and professional careers of our students and faculty!

PSI Lecture: "Giecz and the Birth of Poland: Tracing Power, Religion and Health in the Early Piast Dynasty" with Lauren Hayden

Tuesday, October 28, 1:00-2:30 PM, 160 Enarson Classroom Building

A thousand years ago, a stronghold in Giecz was one of a series of important centers during the birth of the Polish state and the spread of Christianity. Despite its historical importance, few primary historical sources are available for this study, making it critical to survey archaeological records to better understand how people lived during this time and how political and religious transformations at the beginning of Poland shaped early medieval life. This talk will discuss bioarchaeological evidence from the 11-12th century cemetery of Giecz and present how the study of its skeletal remains can inform about the lives of the individuals who were interred there. Blending history and bioarchaeology, this presentation will demonstrate the importance of Giecz to understand how state formation, political change, and religion shaped society and affected the lived experience of this early medieval Polish population.

Coffee and light refreshments will be provided. 

We’re thrilled to share that the campaign is gaining real traction: thanks to 15 generous donors, we’ve now raised $2,212, enough to fund two full PSI scholarships! Your support is already making a tangible difference, and we’re so grateful.

This week, we’re turning our attention to the people who laid the foundation for PSI’s success. One of those pillars is Dr. Yana Hashamova, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor and former Director of CSEEES. Her vision and leadership helped shape the community we’re building on today.

Let’s keep the momentum going—share the campaign, invite others to join and help us support even more opportunities and projects that celebrate Polish Studies.

PSI Founder: Dr. Yana Hashamova (Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures)

My name is Yana Hashamova, Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, and I had the honor to establish the Polish Studies Initiative a few years back with the enthusiastic support of Ohio State president Gordon Gee. After I presented to him the research achievements in the Polish field and the number of students who have learned Polish at the Ohio State University, he embraced the idea about a Polish study initiative, and generously donated funds, which were matched by other units on campus and community partners, and we successfully raised over $100,000 funds which have continued to support and advance research in Polish studies and the teaching and learning of the Polish language. I wholeheartedly urge all who have any interest in Polish studies and for whom Polish culture is dear to donate, so we can sustain the initiative and continue our work in the future.

Two weeks down and we are making some fantastic progress. First and foremost, thank you to our 10 wonderful donors who have already given, we're excited to share that we've raised enough funds to support either a full PSI scholarship or grant! We could not have done that without your generosity! Be sure to keep spreading the word as it will help us to support projects like the one proposed by 2023 grant recipient, Dr. Naomi Brenner (Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures). Read her story below to learn about how PSI helped to fund her research project.

2023 PSI Grant Recipient: Dr. Naomi Brenner (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)
My work focuses on the emergence of popular fiction in Yiddish and Hebrew during the 1930s and 1940s, exploring the kinds of fiction people read during the interwar period and analyzing fictional representations of Polish Jewish society. As I researched one of the most popular Yiddish trashy novels published in Warsaw in the middle of the 1930s, I found that it was based on a long-forgotten but once popular Polish novel Siostra Marja. The Polish Studies Initiative Grant in 2023 gave me the opportunity to work closely with a graduate student who researched the Polish novel and searched the Polish press for information about a plagiarism trial that unfolded in Warsaw in 1938. Since I cannot read Polish, the grant allowed me to include Polish primary sources in my research and to incorporate more perspectives on Polish culture. This work shows clear interactions and influences between early twentieth-century Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew fiction, helping us better understand the linguistic and cultural dynamics of interwar popular fiction in Poland. The connections between these texts demonstrate the close relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish writers and readers and the vibrant literary environment that existed in Warsaw before World War II.

In 2025 I was also awarded the Stuart and Lynda Resnick Fellowship at the National Library of Israel. This prestigious award includes a generous stipend and digitization allowance which further supported my research on Yiddish and Hebrew entertainment fiction in Poland and Palestine. 

Stay tuned for more updates and stories from our PSI alumni in the coming weeks!

We're officially a week into our campaign! First and foremost, thank you so much to our 7 donors who have already given. We're now 15% of the way to our goal and your support has nearly funded a full PSI scholarship! Talk about an amazing community! 

You might have seen it on the main page of the fundraiser, but this year, we asked our OIA colleague Adam Johnson to design a logo for PSI; a wycinanka, but with a little Buckeye flair. The design beautifully blends traditional gwiazdka (star-shaped) motifs with natural elements inspired by the iconic buckeye itself. The result is a fusion of Polish folk art and regional identity, celebrating both cultural heritage and Ohio State pride.

This design is featured on the luggage tags and post-it note booklets that will be sent to our donors as a humble thank you for their generosity. 

All thank you notes and gifts will be sent towards the end of the campaign, so if you don't receive yours by the end of the year, please send our program coordinator an email at baca.31@osu.edu.

Please continue to share and spread the word, we can't wait to share our PSI alumni stories with you starting next week!

We're thrilled you're here—because your support fuels something extraordinary. At Ohio State, the Polish Studies Initiative (PSI) opens doors for students and faculty to explore Poland’s rich history, vibrant culture, and dynamic present through immersive study abroad programs and groundbreaking research.

Every gift helps spark curiosity, deepen understanding, and build global connections. And the impact? It’s real. Just ask our PSI alumni whose journeys have led to transformative academic experiences, lifelong friendships, and scholarship that bridges continents!

Your gift also helps preserve and celebrate Polish cultural heritage and ensuring that its stories, traditions, and voices continue to inspire future generations.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Dziękujemy!

Old Town Warsaw by Alicia Baca (PSI Program Coordinator)