Magdalena Śniadecka-Kotarska

Magdalena Śniadecka-Kotarska is the Polish Ambassador to Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. She is an ethnologist/anthropologist of culture and politics, conducting field research in Andean America devoted to ethnopolitics, native populations and gender identity.

Research interests Śniadecka-Kotarska specializes in ethno-political research of the Andean region (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia) and the Mesoamerican region (borderland between Mexico and Guatemala). Śniadecka-Kotarska explores conflicts among native populations, and the mechanisms of ethno-development from top-down and bottom-up perspectives (emic/etic) on the micro and macro scales. She was the first academic in Poland in the 1990s to research narco-culture, narco-violence, narco-terror, and different diversifications of sex identity among Indian and Mestizo women.

Academic career Śniadecka-Kotarska graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Łódź (1983), and for 12 years worked in the Ethnography Department of the faculty. Since 1995 she has been an employee and co-founder of the Institute of International Relations (currently the Faculty of International and Political Studies of the University of Łódź). Simultaneously, she was bound by a fixed contract with the Centre for Latin-American Studies of the University of Warsaw [Pol. CESLA]. She was granted her PhD at the University of Łódź in 1990, her postdoctoral degree at Adam Mickiewicz University in 2004,

Awards and prizes The Golden Cross of Merit was bestowed on her by the president of Poland in 2005 for research in the Andean region, and in 2015 for the Medal for Long Service. In 2013 she received the Margherita von Bretano Prize at the Free University of Berlin for research on Indian feminism. Multiple times she received Rector's Prizes at the University of Łódź and the University of Warsaw. In 2018 she was awarded the title VIP graduate of the University of Łódź. She began her term in March 2018, and ended in May 2024.