Joanna Podolska served from 2011 to 2024 as the director of the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź, Poland, which is dedicated to preserving the multicultural heritage of the city with particular emphasis on its Jewish past. She is currently associated with the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Łódź. Prior to 2011, she worked for eighteen years as a journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza. For three decades she has explored and promoted the rich multiethnic history of Łódź and other parts of Poland through books, articles, and exhibitions, often about significant artistic and political figures such as the writer Chava Rosenfarb, the artist Artur Szyk, the diplomat Jan Karski, and the Łódź Ghetto fighter and medical doctor Marek Edelman. Podolska is the recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polish Rebirth, for outstanding contributions to Polish–Jewish dialogue, and the POLIN Award, for work to protect the memory of Polish Jews.