Breaking the waves – Trajectories of institutionalization, deinstitutionalization and policy development in gender studies at Polish universities: Insights from a case study of the Jagiellonian University

This article revisits the development of gender studies in Poland by reconceptualizing the ‘waves of feminism’ as an analytical framework for tracing shifting configurations of feminist knowledge production under conditions of institutional fragility. Drawing on an embedded case study of the Jagiellonian University in Poland, it examines how gender studies are constructed, sustained and transformed across intersecting academic, political and cultural arenas. The analysis is based on qualitative research combining organizational documents, archival and media materials, and in-depth interviews with pioneers and successors of gender studies. The findings show that the institutional trajectory of the field cannot be understood as a linear process of consolidation. Instead, gender studies evolve through recurrent and relational waves of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization, in which phases of formalization are followed by backlash, dispersion and reconfiguration across diverse institutional carriers. Addressing three research questions, the article identifies key dynamics, forms and mechanisms shaping the development of gender studies in Poland. First, it demonstrates a wave-like trajectory that unfolded at different historical moments, shaped by state socialism, post-1989 transformation and the rise of anti-gender politics. Second, it shows that the institutional presence of the gender perspective takes hybrid and fragmented forms across programmes, networks, projects and governance frameworks, enabling knowledge circulation while reproducing institutional fragility. Third, it highlights that feminist knowledge is sustained and reconstructed through feminist memory work, in which narratives, relationships and affect function as living archives beyond stable organizational structures. By reframing institutionalization as an ongoing process of reassembly rather than accumulation, the article contributes to feminist debates on temporality, knowledge circulation and the politics of institutionalization. It argues that institutional fragility should be understood not merely as a constraint, but as a constitutive condition shaping the persistence, transformation and resilience of feminist knowledge in non-Western academic contexts.