Jan Gryta is a historian specializing in Central Europe and a researcher of Polish memory and national heritage. He defended his doctorate in Manchester and currently works in the History Department at the University of Bristol. His work focuses on the memory of the Holocaust and the history of Jewish monuments. He examines not only the commemoration (and
neglect) of the Holocaust, but also the effects of commemorative processes on Polish society. His first publication revealed the backgrounds of Holocaust exhibits in Kraków between 1980 and 2013. One of the central aims of the project was to present the continuity of commemorative work in the 1980s and 90s.

His most recent project is focused on the 1960s and the campaigns organized by the communist authorities to commemorate the Second World War. This work will also analyze the ways in which local and international activists competed or cooperated with various bodies of the central powers.