Agnieszka Ilwicka-Karuna

PhD Candidate, University of Florida

Assistant, Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Poland in San Francisco

Agnieszka (Aga) Ilwicka-Karuna is a PhD candidate in Jewish Studies at the History Department of the University of Florida. Her work focuses primarily on post-war migration, language, women's and children's history, memory, politics, philanthropy, and last but not least, oral history. Aga graduated from the Jewish Studies program at the University of Southampton with a Master of Research. She holds a Master of Arts and a BA in Humanities from the University of Wrocław.

In 2012-2013, Aga was awarded a one-year fellowship at the Yiddish Book Center that led her down the path of oral history. Since then, she has recorded over 150 interviews in Yiddish, Polish, and English among the Jewish communities in Poland, Israel, and the United States. The interviews are available here: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/wexler-oral-history-project.

Aga is a strong advocate for human, animal, and nature rights. Her main areas of interest are migration, philanthropy, memory, and the preservation of languages, with a strong focus on the Yiddish language and culture.

In the Bay Area, she serves the Polish community as an assistant at the Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Poland in San Francisco.