This article discusses some proposals aimed at creating a new discipline named polonistyka (Polish studies), an umbrella term which would encompass those research (sub)divisions that fall outside the traditional academic taxonomy. The article identifies three cultural turns whose shockwave effect have significantly changed the face of the humanities. They are the transition from the analogue to the digital; an impasse in the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies; and the continual fragmentation of research interests. The new discipline, as envisaged by the article, would reintegrate and provide institutional recognition to all kinds of studies, projects and probes. It would also create a framework for some kind of academic certification of research interests that are in dispute. To achieve these goals it would be necessary to redefine the subject matter, the scope as well as the functioning of the new discipline. That, in turn, implies a reformatting of the legacy model of teaching and study to fit in with the new discipline. The transition is absolutely necessary, not least because of the real danger of marginalization and pauperization of the profession (i.e. teachers and specialists in the field of ‘Polish philology’).

Irena Reślińska (Kwilecka) was the eminent expert in the fields of Polish philology, linguistic and religiosity. Born in environs of Kalisz (in Great Poland), she studied Polish philology and sociology in Poznań in the years 1948–1952, and first was appointed as assistant at the University until 1964, and then in Department of Slavistics (Zakład Słowianoznawstwa) of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Bohemian Studies. Her teachers and mentors were Stanisław Urbańczyk and Stefan Vrtel-Wierczyński. In 1952 she married Andrzej Kwilecki (1928–2019) – later the famous sociologist. She received her PhD in 1964, habilitation in 1970, the title of professor in 1990, and she retired in 1996. The most important achievements of I. Kwilecka were: the discovery in 1955 of the manuscript inheritance of polish writer and predicant Thomas of Zbrudzewo (*ca 1500, † 1567), the discovery of Latin-Polish Dictionary of Bartholomew of Bydgoszcz ( *ca 1480, † 1548) – both these important sources to linguistic and religious life in Poland on the eve of modern era were the subject of numerous studies of Kwilecka and her team. She died in the middle of 2022.