Stanley Bill is Associate Professor in Polish Studies and Director of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He works on twentieth-century Polish literature and culture, and on contemporary political discourse in Poland. He has particular interests in populist discourse, postcolonial interpretations of Polish cultural and political history, the poetics of the body, and Polish-Ukrainian relations. He is the author of Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021) and co-editor of The Routledge World Companion to Polish Literature (2021). Among other subjects, he has published articles on populism and civil society in Poland; the discourse of the current Polish government (with Ben Stanley); postcolonial theory in the Polish context; legacies of Polish Romanticism; and the works of Czesław Miłosz, Bruno Schulz, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He has published translations of Czesław Miłosz’s novel The Mountains of Parnassus (Yale University Press, 2017) and a selection of short stories by Bruno Schulz entitled Nocturnal Apparitions (London, 2022). He is founder and editor-at-large of the news and opinion website Notes from Poland.
Robert Bubczyk is Associate Professor of History at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, where he works in the Department of History. He specializes in European medieval history and the history of culture. In his scholarly activity Robert Bubczyk mainly focuses on various social and cultural aspects of leisure and entertainment. Robert Bubczyk is the author of approximately 100 academic publications, including four monographs, articles and reviews (written in Polish and English). He has participated in a number of international conferences and has been awarded several international scholarships, including the US Fulbright Senior Grant. Robert Bubczyk is also committed to teaching Polish history to foreigners. Over the past twenty years he has been delivering original lectures in English on Polish history and culture to foreign students who study at UMCS on different academic exchange programmes (Erasmus, summer school etc.). Currently professor Bubczyk is a member of the team, based at UMCS and KUL, which is preparing the e-Polish Studies programme.
Marta Bucholc is a professor of sociology at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, and a Chercheuse Associée at the Centre de recherche en science politique, University of Saint-Louis in Brussels. She leads the ERC Consolidator project “ABORTION FIGURATIONS” at the University of Warsaw, as well as the Polish team of the Volkswagen Foundation project “Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism” From 2015 to 2020, she worked as a Senior Professor at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Recht als Kultur” at the University of Bonn. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Saint-Louis in Brussels and the University of Graz, a visiting bye-fellow at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, a fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and an Imre Kertesz Kolleg fellow in Jena. She has also received a fellowship from the Universalism and Particularism Project at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski is Professor of Polish-Lithuanian History in the University of London and Principal Historian of the Polish History Museum in Warsaw. His research focuses on politics, religion, culture, and ideas in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among his publications are the books, also published in Polish: Poland’s Last King and English Culture: Stanisław August Poniatowski 1732=1798 (1998), The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church 1788-1792: A Political History (2012), The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1733-1795: Light and Flame (2020), and The Constitution of 3 May 1791: Testament of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (2021).
Clarinda Calma currently works as political expert for science and Education at the Polish Embassy in London. She has a PhD in the Humanities from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and has published widely on early modern print culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London.
Prof. Norman Davies. English historian of Welsh descent, known for his excellent publications on the history of Europe and the British Isles. He is the author of the prize-winning history of Poland, God’s Playground (1981) and the Number 1 best-seller in Britain Europe: A History (OUP, 1996). Professor Davies has been awarded the CMG in 2001 for ‘services to history’, and has collected several Polish distinctions including the Order of Merit. Norman Davies is a regular broadcaster and commentator. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia, McGill, Hokkaido, Stanford, Harvard, Adelaide, ANU, and Cambridge. From 2000 – 2006 he was a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and in 2006-2008 a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He is an Honorary Fellow of St.Antony’s College, Oxford University and an honorary citizen of four Polish cities – Lublin, Krakow, Warsaw and Wroclaw. Today Norman Davies resides in Oxford where he lives and writes.
Publications in English: White Eagle, Red Star: the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-20 (1972); God’s Playground: a History of Poland (1981); Heart of Europe: the Past in Poland’s Present (1984); Europe: a History (1996); The Isles: a History (1996); Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City, on Wroclaw/Breslau, with Roger Moorhouse (2000); Rising ’44: the Battle for Warsaw (2003); Europe East and West: Collected Essays (2006); Europe at War, 1939-45: No Simple Victory (2006), published in the USA as No Simple Victory (2007)”; Vanished Kingdoms (2011); Beneath Another Sky: A Global Journey into History (2017).
Rory Finnin is Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He launched the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies programme in 2008. His primary research interest is the interplay of literature and national identity in Ukraine. He is the author of the new book Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (University of Toronto Press, 2022), which has won the Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies and the American Association for Ukrainian Studies Best Book Prize.
Robert Frost holds the Burnett Fletcher Chair of History at the University of Aberdeen. He grew up in Edinburgh, and graduated in Modern History at the University of St Andrews, where he developed an interest in Polish history. He studied for a diploma in Polish Language and Culture at the Jagiellonian University, Cracow in 1980–1981 and wrote his doctorate at the School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University of London, a revised version of which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 as After the Deluge. Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War, 1655–1660. He taught at King’s College London from 1987, and his second book, The Northern Wars: War, State & Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558-1721 was published by Longman in 2000. In 2004 he moved to Aberdeen in 2004, and is currently writing a three-volume history of the Polish-Lithuanian Union for Oxford University Press. Volume One, The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385–1569 (2015) won the Pro Historia Polonorum Prize for the best foreign-language book on Polish history published between 2012 and 2017. Volume Two, The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic, 1569–1648 is nearing completion.
Jan Gryta is a Lecturer in Holocaust History at the University of Southampton. He is a cultural historian with particular interests in the Holocaust commemorations in Poland, postwar nation-building, and the history of social consensus under state Socialism. In his research, Janek spotlights the global connections of local memory activists and traces their international networks. He is especially interested in embedding Polish Holocaust memory into a broader narrative about global memory trends while also maintaining and highlighting the Polish specificity of this memory. Amongst his most recent publications are ‘Regional Professionals, American Activists, and the Iron Curtain: Transnational Memory Work during the Cold War in the Jewish Quarter of Kraków’ published in Canadian Slavonic Papers, 63(1-2) (2021), and ‘Generational Succession, Culture and Politics: the Shaping of Euro-Atlantic Sites of Memory’ published in Memory Studies, 13(6) (2020).
Jan Kubik is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University and Professor of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London (UCL). The 2020 President of Association for East European and Eurasian Studies and the recipient of the 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America (PIASA). Co-Principal Investigator (with Richard Mole) of two international projects, Delayed Transformational Fatigue in Central and Eastern Europe (FATIGUE) and Populist Rebellion Against Modernity in 21st-century Eastern Europe (POPREBEL) (https://populism-europe.com/poprebel/). His work deals with the rise of right-wing populism; culture and politics; memory politics; civil society, protest politics and social movements; communist and post-communist politics; and interpretive/ethnographic methods in political science. Among his publications are: The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power; Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989-1993 (with Grzegorz Ekiert); Anthropology and Political Science (with Myron Aronoff); Postcommunism from Within. Social Justice, Mobilization, and Hegemony (edited with Amy Linch); and Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration (with Michael Bernhard). He is currently working on several publications based on the FATIGUE and POPREBEL projects. He received an M.A. (sociology and philosophy) from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and Ph.D. (anthropology, with distinction) from Columbia University in NYC.
Joanna Niżyńska is Associate Professor of Polish Literature and Culture at the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA. Joanna’s research interests focus on trauma and cultural memory in post-communist Poland, comparative memory studies, and the “glocalization” of Western theory in Eastern Europe. She is the author of The Kingdom of Insignificance: Miron Białoszewski and the Quotidian, the Queer, and the Traumatic (Northwestern UP, 2013), co-editor of Germany, Poland, and Postmemorial Relations: In Search of a Livable Past (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Being Poland: A New History of Literature and Culture since 1918 (University of Toronto Press, 2018). As a 2022-2023 Fulbright US Scholar in Warsaw, she is currently working on a book project investigating cultural memory of the 1968 antisemitic campaign in contemporary Poland.
Edyta Nowosielska is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, specialising in teaching Polish as a foreign language. She holds a Master’s degree in Polish Philology from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She is also the founder of Polword, the first private school in London offering Polish language and culture courses to adults. Her teaching experience includes various respected institutions such as University College London, the Polish Research Centre of the Jagiellonian University and the University of Łódź. She also taught Polish for GCSE and A-Level at a Polish Saturday School in London. Edyta is closely connected with the Polish University Abroad in London and actively participates in the life of the UK’s Polish diaspora. Her research primarily focuses on multiculturalism and glottodidactics, with a particular interest in emerging trends in teaching Polish as a foreign language.
Ewa Ochman is Senior Lecturer in East European Studies in the Department of History at the University of Manchester and a committee member of the Polish Studies Group at the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. Ewa is the author of Post-communist Poland: Contested Pasts and Future Identities and has published on issues relating to Polish politics of memory, difficult heritage, and state sponsored history in Memory Studies, History and Memory, Nationalities Papers, East European Politics and Societies, Contemporary European History, and Cold War History. Her article on the legacies of transition in Poland and the material heritage of communist dictatorship has just been published in the Journal of Contemporary History. She is a member of the Centre for the Cultural History of War and the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester.
Benjamin Paloff chairs the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, where he is also a professor of Comparative Literature. His books include Lost in the Shadow of the Word (Space, Time, and Freedom in Interwar Eastern Europe) (Northwestern University Press, 2016), which was named 2018 Best Book in Literary Studies by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, and many translations from Polish, Czech, Russian, and Yiddish, notably of works by Dorota Masłowska, Marek Bieńczyk, Richard Weiner, and Yuri Lotman. His research focuses on philosophical dilemmas, particularly in metaphysics and the ethics of representation, in modern Central and Eastern European literature, as well as on translation theory and practice.
Brian Porter-Szűcs is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. His most recent book is Wiara i Ojczyzna: Katolicyzm, Nowoczesność, i Polska (Wydawnictwo Filtry, 2022), which is a updated and translated version of Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is also the author of Całkiem zwyczajny kraj: Historia Polski bez martyrologii (Wydawnictwo Filtry, 2021), a revised and expanded edition of Poland and the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom (Wiley Blackwell, 2014), as well as When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in 19th Century Poland (Oxford University Press, 2000), which was translated into Polish as Gdy nacjonalizm zaczął nienawidzić: Wyobrażenia nowoczesnej polityki w dziewiętnastowiecznej Polsce (Pogranicze, 2011).
Adam Daniel Rotfeld is a professor at “Artes Liberales” Faculty at the Warsaw University. His research is focused on the theory and practice of international security and human rights, conflict solution, arms control and disarmament. Former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2005) and director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute-SIPRI (1990-2022). Member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (2006-2011). Co-Chairman of the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters (2008-2015) and member of the OSCE Panel of Eminent Persons on European Security as a Common Project. Published more than 30 monographs and about 500 articles and studies. Most recent publication: The War on Values and International Order (UMCS University, Lublin 2023).
Schamma Schahadat is a professor of Slavic literatures at Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany. She is working mainly on Russian and Polish literatures with a focus on literary theory, translation studies, gender studies and (Polish) film history. Her latest publications are: „Alles ist teurer als ukrainisches Leben“. Texte über Westsplaining und den Krieg, ed. with Aleksandra Konarzewska and Nina Weller, Berlin 2023; Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West, ed. with Michał Mrugalski and Irina Wutsdorff, Berlin 2022; Weltliteratur in der longue durée, ed. with Annette Werberger, Paderborn 2021.
Marek Skulimowski was born in Lubaczów, Poland. He graduated from the University of Warsaw – American Studies Center. He was elected President and Executive Director of the New York-based Kosciuszko Foundation in 2016. Skulimowski is an experienced former Polish diplomat, businessman, and philanthropist in charge of the Foundation’s mission of promoting education and Polish culture. Skulimowski transformed the building and artwork collection during his tenure at the Kosciuszko Foundation. He expanded the Polish language studies at American Universities and popularized the Teaching English in Poland Program. Skulimowski also focused on maximizing the number of awarded fellow recipients and fervently promoted Polish culture abroad. From 2011-2016 he served as Deputy Consul General of the Republic of Poland in New York and as Political Counselor at the Embassy of Poland in Tel Aviv, Israel. Skulimowski was the Director of U.S. Operations for INGLOT Cosmetics, expanding the company’s business to more than 40 locations and 100 distribution outlets nationwide. He has an extensive business and management background as well as an intimate knowledge of Poland, its culture, and its people. He also has experience raising funds for needy children and Polish schools in New York. Skulimowski successfully led a program of recovering Polish art looted by Nazi Germany during World War II and has been praised for his work promoting Polish-Jewish understanding and respect.
Andrzej Szeptycki – political scientist, University professor at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Warsaw, expert of Institute Strategie 2050 think tank. Research interests: foreign policies of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, EU Eastern policy, post-colonial studies, politics of memory. Currently head of the research project „Wars of Russia” financed by the Polish National Science Center.
Tamara Trojanowska was the head of Polish Language and Literature Program, The University Drama Program, and the Center for Drama, Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. She is currently Vice-Dean Faculty in the Faculty of Arts and Science. In 2019, together with colleagues from the CDTPS she established the BMO Lab for Creative Research in the Arts, Performance, Emerging Technologies and AI (https://www.cdtps.utoronto.ca/research-centres-institutes -labs/bmo-lab) and conducted preliminary research in this area as part of the two-year SSHRC Insight Development Grant. Her research focuses on the intersections of drama and theatre with history, philosophy, and religious thought, emphasizing transgression and identity. Some of her publications transpired from the international conferences she organized. One was New Perspectives on Polish Culture: Personal Encounters, Public Affairs (2012); the other was the conference-born idea of a new history of Polish literature, finalized together with Joanna Niżyńska and Przemysław Czapliński as Being Poland. A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918 (2018). The 800-page book received the 2019 prestigious ATSEEEL award for the best-edited volume. For years, Tamara Trojanowska has also been collaborating with the IBL PAN research and publishing project „Reaktywacje dramatu,” edited by Artur Grabowski and Jacek Kopciński, where she published a new selection of Roman Brandstaetter’s plays (Dzień gniewu. Dramaty, 2016) with her introduction.
Tomasz Zarycki is a sociologist and social geographer, professor at the University of Warsaw and deputy director of the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies (ISS UW). His main fields of interest include the sociology of science, politics, culture and the historical sociology of elites, as well as the socio-political geography of Central and Eastern European countries with a particular focus on Poland and Russia. His books publications include “The New Socio-Political Space of Poland” (in Polish, 1997), “The Region as a Context of Political Behavior” (in Polish, 2002), “Cultural Capital. The intelligentsia in Poland and Russia” (In Polish, 2008), “Peripheries: A New View of Center-Periphery Relationships” (In Polish, 2009), “Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe” (Routledge, 2014), “A Peripheral Game: Polish Political Science in the Global Field of Social Sciences” (In Polish, jointly with Tomasz Warczok, 2016), “Intelligentsia’s Totem: Aristocracy, Nobility and Landed gentry in the Polish Social Space (In Polish, jointly with Rafał Smoczyński, 2017) and “The Polish Elite and Language Sciences A Perspective of Global Historical Sociology” (Palgrave, 2022).
