Dr. Elżbieta Olzacka is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. She has received a Master’s degrees in Sociology (2007) and Russian Studies (2011) and a Ph.D. in Sociology (2014) from the Jagiellonian University. In 2018, she was a Visiting Scholar at The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, USA. Her interests include theories of war and conflict from sociological, anthropological, and cultural study perspectives. Several of her papers, as well as her book "War and Culture. The Early Modern Military Revolution in Western Europe and Russia" have been devoted to the role of the cultural context in the analysis of historical and contemporary wars. Her main areas of interest include the culture, society, and history of the former Soviet region (especially Eastern Europe and Central Asia). In 2014-2016, she conducted a research project financed by the Polish National Science Center, dedicated to the civil war in the Republic of Tajikistan. Her current research is on the dynamics of Ukrainian national identity and collective memory construction in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In 2018, she started a research project devoted to shaping new national heroes and their representations in the public spaces of Ukrainian cities.