Urszula Zajączkowska

Urszula Zajączkowska graduated from the Faculty of Forestry at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW) and the Academy of Film and Television, specializing in editing. She is a professor in the Independent Department of Forest Botany at SGGW. Her research focuses on aerodynamics, plant regeneration after injury, and their movement.

In 2015, she co-created the artistic project Cambium Killers as a protest against the new science evaluation system. She directed the film Metamorphosis of Plants (2016), which won the award for Best Experimental Film/Animation at the SCINEMA International Science Film Festival in Sydney and the Audience Award at the Light Festival in Miami.

Her poetry debut, Atoms (2014), was nominated for the Silesius Poetry Award. Her 2017 collection, Minimum, won the Kościelski Foundation Award. In 2019, she published a collection of essays, Sticks and Twigs (Patyki, badyle), which received multiple literary awards. In 2021, her poetry volume Sand (Piach) was nominated for the Wisława Szymborska Award.

In 2024, she wrote the libretto for a children’s opera titled The Rat and the Tree (Szczur i drzewo), staged during the Warsaw Autumn Contemporary Music Festival. She is a regular contributor to the cultural magazine Dwutygodnik.