Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Culture in the Institute of English Studies of the Jagiellonian University, has been working in the Department since 1990. In 1994, she obtained a postgraduate diploma in British Studies from the British Studies Institute in Warsaw University and Ruskin College, Oxford. In 2002, she defended a PhD thesis on the cinematic effects in contemporary fiction. In 2014, she published her habilitation book entitled History, Memory, Trauma in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction.
She teaches civilisation and culture of the British Isles, contemporary fiction and comparative courses on film and literature.
She has participated in international conferences (Tromso, Salzburg, Berlin) and literary and cultural seminars (Tours, Cambridge) and published articles on contemporary British and Irish novelists: McEwan, Amis, Ishiguro, Banville, Barry, Tóibín; migration, multiculturalism as well as the influence of cineliteracy on the narrative techniques.
Her academic interests also include the influence of memory on identity, both individual and collective, collective and cultural memory, and literature as an instrument of cultural memory with particular emphasis on the question of trauma and its representation in literature and culture.
She is a member of Nordic Irish Studies Network, Twenty-First Century Trust and Polish Association for the Study of English (PASE).
Selected publications:
Piątek, Beata; ‘How McEwan Makes Us See: Cinematic Techniques in The Child in Time, Black Dogs and Enduring Love,' in Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies: Focus on Ian McEwan and the Media, 21: 2, 2010, Universitätsverlag WINTER, Heidelberg.
Piątek, Beata; ‘Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go: an Unscientific Science Fiction,' in From the Cradle to the Grave: Life-Course Models in Literary Genres, red. Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Sarah Herbe, Universitätsverlag WINTER, Heidelberg, 2011.
Piątek, Beata; „Tekst jako trauma – Pejzaż w kolorze sepii Kazuo Ishiguro," in Trauma, pamięć, wyobraźnia, red. Józef Wróbel, Zofia Podniesińska, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków, 2011.
Piątek, Beata; ‘Irish History in the Novels of Sebastian Barry,' in Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 6 (2011).
Piątek, Beata; ‘Eschewing Factuality: Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife,' in Confronting the Burden of History: Literary Representations of the Past, red. Izabela Curyłło-Klag, Bożena Kucała, Universitas, Kraków, 2012.
Piątek, Beata; History, Memory, Trauma in Contemporary British and Irish Fiction. Kraków, Jagiellonian University Press, 2014.
Piątek Beata; ‘From "the age of mud" to the Age of Smoke; WWI in the Novels of Graham Swift' in Conflicting Discourses, Competing Memories: Commemorating First World War, red. Anna Branach-Kallas, Natalia Sabiniarz, Nelly Strehlau, Toruń, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, 2015.
Piątek Beata; „Cień Wielkiej Wojny w anty-Downton Abbey. Za ścianą Sarah Waters,” in Powieść brytyjska w XXI wieku. Szkice, red. Ewa Kowal, Bożena Kucała, Robert Kusek, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków, 2018.
Piątek Beata; ‘ „Byliśmy młode chłopaki, razem w tej kupie gnoju” – odpolitycznienie pamięci narodowej i rewizjonizm historyczny w pierwszowojennych powieściach Toma Phelana i Sebastiana Barry’ego,’ in Teksty drugie, 4: 172, 2018.
Piątek Beata; ‘The ‘unspeakableness’ of Life in Northern Ireland: Anna Burns’s Milkman,’ in Litteraria Copernicana, 2020, Ellipsis no. 3 (35).
Beata Piątek; ‘Ireland’s “broken’ homes in the novels of Tana French,’ in Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, 2022, 36 [7].