Research Discipline(s)
Brief Biography (English)
Professor Jerzy Koch is tenured professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and was until 2021 head of the Department of Dutch and South African Studies at the Faculty of English. Until 2011 he was appointed as tenured professor at Wroclaw University. He is founder and also chief editor of “Werkwinkel. Journal of Low Countries and South African Studies” <http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/werkwinkel >. He lectures specifically colonial Dutch and Afrikaans literature, literature of the Low Countries after 1830, and as researcher he is interested in South Afrikan and Afrikaans literature, literary translations, and cultural transfer. Prof Koch's books include Multatuli w Polsce (2000, Multatuli in Poland), Miedzy Holandia a Indonezja (2000, Between the Netherlands and Indonesia), Outsider onder de zijnen: vormen van xenofanie in de Afrikaanse roman (2002, An Outsider among His Own Kind: Forms of Xenofania in the Afrikaans Novel), Historia literatury południowoafrykańskiej. Literatura afrikaans XVII-XIX wiek (2004, English translation published by Van Schaik A History of South African literature. Afrikaans literature 17th-19th century, 2015), Wenus Hotentocka i inne rozprawy o literaturze poludniowoafrykańskiej (2008, Hottentot Venus and other essays on South African literature), Historia literatury południowoafrykańskiej. Literatura Afrikaans. Okres usamodzielnienia 1900–1930 (English translation published by Van Schaik A History of South African LiteratureAfrikaans Literature. Part Two: The Period of Emancipation 1900–1930, 2022). Some of the publications, e.g. Outsider onder de zijnen (An Outsider among His Own Kind) are available in Dutch at DBNL. His articles have been published in a.o. Stilet, Literator, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, Tydskrif vir Nederlands & Afrikaans (T.N.A.) and Acta Academica, Spiegel der Letteren, Over Multatuli, or Hollands Maandblad. He also translated South African authors: Ingrid Jonker, Etienne Leroux, Breyten Breytenbach, Antjie Krog, and Wilma Stockenström. For his translations from the Dutch literature into Polish (more than twenty books, a.o. of H. Claus, J. Bernlef, H. de Coninck, G. Kouwenaar, Lucebert, H. Mulisch, Multatuli, L. Nolens, M.L. Rijneveld, P. Rodenko, F. Timmermans) he received in the Netherlands: the M. Nijhoff-award (1995) and in Poland: Gdynia Literary Prize (2023). For his endeavours in the field of Dutch Studies he received the Visser Neerlandia award in 2009. Prof Koch is a member of the Maatschapij der Nederlandse Letterkunde in Leiden, PEN Afrikaans, Association of Polish authors (SPP), Polish Association of Literary Translators (STL) and is the first foreign member of the South African Academy of Science and Art / Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (2006).
In 2020 he published a volume of Afrikaans poetry in Pleks van plaas (Naledi: Cape Town). In 2022 came his second collection of Afrikaans poems Polkadraai.
He is married to Magdalena an extraordinary professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and specialist in Slavic Studies.
