Konrad Wnęk (Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Career

I graduated in history from the Jagiellonian University in 1994. My MA thesis was related to the problem of demographical transition in the south of Poland during the nineteenth century. I focused on the problem of mortality in the big city Lvov. I obtained Ph.D. from the Jagiellonian University in 1998 on the subject of ‘Influence of the climatic factors on the socioeconomic development of Galicia’. In October 1999 I became an Associate Professor at the Jagiellonian University and the Head of Computer Laboratory in the Institute of History.

Current Research

My last research project concerns two issues connected with GIS. The first one the deals with the reconstruction of the social, demographical and economic view of the city in the nineteenth century in southern Poland. To achieve this I am going to create the electronic maps concerning the demographical data originated from the Census Enumeration Books and from the catastrial tax sources. As a result of such combination we will get socio-topographical picture of the city answering a range of questions.

The second project concerns creating GIS system containing changes of the county boundaries in Galicia in 1772-1918. The mentioned project is closely connected with the research being carried for many years in the Department of Socio-Economic History and Statistics which resulted in publication of several books containing demographical, social structure and industrial data. My aim is to combine statistic data with the geographical information coming from the paper maps. If it turns out to be successful we will get the first electronical atlas dealing with socio-economic history in Poland.

Personal research:

I am interested in historical demography, especially in mortality and morbidity in 19-20th century Galicia (southern part of Poland). In my MA thesis I have made research on human population in Lvov (Lwów, Lemberg) 1857-1939, concerning births and mortality in many aspects (i.e. age, sex, religion groups, seasonality etc.).

The Ph.D. thesis was an attempt to have a look on climate as on the one of the most important factors influencing social life. To gather necessary materials the database, including all needed information about Galicia’s climatic past, has been created and equipped with the additional demographical and economic issues. The mentioned database has got about twenty thousand records. In the later stage of work the computer methods of statistical and cartographic analysis were widely used. In this research the analysis of climatic data for Kraków in 1792–1913 was carried out, which was very helpful in getting information to verify the influence of climate on some aspects of economic and social life. The results of temperature, pressure and rainfall surveying were presented. The seasonality of these phenomena could also be discussed thanks to applying interesting statistical method called fast Fourier’s transformation (FFT) which was used in historical research for the first time. The analyses of climatic changes in time and in the district of all Galicia have been presented here. Next part of the research has been meant to present the role of climate in the nineteenth century society, its impact on particular socio-economic factors including crop production, price fluctuation and mortality. Additionally, in the foregoing dissertation the answers to the questions of climate research significance were presented illustrating its numerous application in the social and economic history.

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