As a historian, her research interests focus on the histories of colonialism, historiography, and the Baltic Sea region of the 20th century. Grzechnik received her Ph.D. in history and civilization from the European University Institute in 2010. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Interdisciplinary Research Training Group (IRTG) “Baltic Borderlands: Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region” at the University of Greifswald from 2012 and 2016.