Staff profile

Ania is a NINE DTP ESRC-funded PhD student in education and geography. Before beginning her studies at Durham in October 2018, she graduated with a BA in Geography (2014-2017) and an MPhil in Education, Globalisation, and International Development (2017-2018) from the University of Cambridge.

Ania’s doctoral research focuses on the role of parental cultural heritage in shaping the feelings and understandings of belonging amongst immigrant-background emerging adults. Using collaborative qualitative methods to work with emerging adults from a range of cultural and ethnic background, Ania aims to paint a broader picture of how heritage, identity, and education intersect in the narratives of belonging in the migration context. She hopes to use this knowledge to inform further research on practices and policies that would support immigrant communities, mainstream schools, and individuals in navigating these complex processes of understanding and embracing heritage and identity.

Teaching commitments

• Intercultural Communication (Level 4) - 2019/20
• International and Comparative Education (Level 1) - 2020/21

Recent conference papers

(slides and recordings available upon request)

• Gruszczyńska, A. (2021, invited speaker) Maintenance of heritage languages in “immigrant” families in the UK: parental decision making and practices and their impact on immigrant-background children as they step into adulthood. University of Sydney, Sydney Institute of Community Languages Education: International Conference on Community/Heritage Language Education. 
• Gruszczyńska, A. (2021) Understanding, researching, languaging: three ways to think about language and migration. Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference. Session: Lost in translation: beyond the bounds of langauge and migration (chaired by Sergei Shubin and Marcus Doel).
  
• Gruszczyńska, A. (2021) Parental cultural heritage as a border between immigrant parents and their adult children. Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference. Session: Bordering Parenthood/Bordering Family: on the beings, becomings and absences of doing contemporary family (chaired by Amy Walker and Alison Briggs).
• Gruszczyńska, A. (2021) Immigrant-background young adults' journeys towards belonging in the UK. IMISCOE Conference. Session: Crossing borders - feeling connected? An exploration of drivers influencing the development of a sense of belonging in the receiving society (chaired by Elke Murdock and Isabelle Albert).

• Migration, heritage, and language
• Belonging and identity
• Cultural hybridity
• Globalisation, postnationalism, and transnationalism
• Qualitative methods
• Emerging adulthood

Journal Article

• Gruszczyńska, Anna (2019). Maintenance and non-maintenance of community language in immigrant families: the case of Polish parents in the UK. Globalisation, Societies and Education 17(5): 574-592.