On 8 October 2025, the opening meeting of the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Empirical Social Science (ISESS) for the 2025/2026 academic year took place at the University of Warsaw.

The inaugural lecture of the academic year was delivered by Anna Potoczek from Change Lab. Her presentation, titled “On triumphs and tragedies: how societies perceive historical successes and failures”, examined how societies evaluate historical victories and defeats and how narratives about the past shape perceptions of these events.

The research explored whether successful historical events – such as resistance movements, struggles for democracy, or campaigns for equality – are perceived as more moral, historically important, and worthy of commemoration than unsuccessful ones. Drawing on experimental data collected across multiple countries, including Poland, the United States, Norway, and several Central European states, the project investigated how perceptions of historical events are influenced by their outcomes and by national context.

The seminar series, affiliated with the Centre for Excellence in Social Science and organized within the framework of the Excellence Initiative – Research University (IDUB) programme, provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars engaged in empirical social science research. The seminar gathered researchers from diverse social science disciplines interested in different approaches to studying society and politics.