The Graduate School for Social Research

Associate Professor, University of Warsaw

Journalist, publicist and writer. Head of the Science Department of the weekly Polityka, where he deals with civilization issues, issues of modernization, ecology and the digital revolution. Chairman of Rada Fundacji Otwarty Kod Kultury” (the Open Cultural Code Foundation Council) and associate of the Center for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski. Chairman of the Program Council of the Center for Research on the Future at Collegium Civitas.

A philosopher and publicist. Agata Bielik-Robson lives in Warsaw and Nottingham. She works at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and as a professor of Jewish Studies at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Nottingham. She works with the contemporary philosophy of the subject, theory of literature and philosophy of religion, with special focus on Jewish heritage. She published dozens of articles in Polish, German, French, Russian and English, as well as ten books, including: Na drugim brzegu nihilizmu (Warsaw, 1997), Inna nowoczesność (Krakow, 2000), Duch powierzchni: rewizja romantyczna i filozofia (Krakow, 2004), Romantyzm, niedokończony projekt. Eseje (Kraków 2008), Na pustyni. Kryptoteologie późnej nowoczesności (Krakow, 2008), Erros. Mesjański witalizm i filozofia (Krakow 2012) and Cienie pod czerwoną skałą: eseje o literaturze (Gdańsk 2015), as well as The Saving Lie.  Harold Bloom and Deconstruction (Chicago 2011), Jewish Cryptotheologies of Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (London/New York 2014) and a collection of essays Judaism in Contemporary Thought. Traces and Influence (London/New York 2014) co-edited with Adam Lipszyc. In 2017, Żyj i pozwól żyć. – an extended interview with the philosopher, conducted by Michał Sutowski – was published.

Piotr Binder is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interests include problem of poverty, unemployment, coping strategies, local communities, qualitative research methods (including CAQDA). Most recently he focuses on re-visiting issues related to the phenomena of patriotism and nationalism in Poland and Russia. He is a long-time member of the Polish Sociological Association and European Sociological Association.

Professor for  Philosophy, Institut for Philosophy und Sociology Polisch Academie of Sciences Warsaw; Head of the Research Group “Philosophical Anthropology and Social Philosophy” at the IFiS PAN. Research Fellow, Husserl-Archive, Philosophische Fakultät, Universität zu Köln; Editor of the last book of Edmund Husserl “Erfahrung und Urteil” within the series “Edmund Husserls Gesammelte Werke Husserliana”, DFG-Project at the Husserl-Archive, Cologne.

 International Initiatives: since 2018 –  International Mentoring at a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities, since 2017 – ERASMUS+ Agreements for Phenomenology and Practical Philosophy with the University of Cologne,    ERASMUS+ Agreements for Phenomenology and Practical Philosophy with the University of Palermo, Coordination of the section “Gestalt Theory and Philosophy” of the International Society for Gestalt Theory and ist Applications (GTA), 2010 –  Coordination of the International Network Genetic Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (gPHEN).

Professor, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences

Professor, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Director of GSSR

Professor SWPS university of the Social sciences and Humanities

Director of the Institute of Humanities
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Warsaw
Head of the Department of Cultural Studies

Magdalena Grabowska currently works at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Over the years Grabowska has been involved in a number of academic and NGO studies on history feminism and women’s movement in Central and Eastern Europe, including the National Science Center funded research: “Bits of Freedom: Gender Equality Through Women’s Agency in state- socialist Poland and Georgia” (2011-2014). Her publications include “Exploring the Chronology and Intertextuality of Feminist Scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Signs@40, and “Bringing the Second World In: Conservative Revolution(s), Socialist Legacies, and Transnational Silences in the Trajectories of Polish Feminism,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37:2 (Summer 2012), 385-411. Dr. Grabowska is a co-founder of the Foundation for Equality and Emancipation STER, where she currently is conducting an EEA Grants-founded study on the prevalence of sexual violence, in particular rape, in Poland.

Professor Hisaki HASHI (University of Vienna)

is leading a course on Buddhism and contemporary European philosophy based on comparative philosophy in the 2020/21 academic year. Working field: East Asian philosophy, philosophy of Buddhism, comparative philosophy, theories of cognition in interdisciplinary research for philosophy and natural science. Since 2003 as Univ.-Doz. (Dr. habil., i.e. legally-authorized qualification for professorship) at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, giving courses and mentoring doctoral candidates. In 2020/21 leading a course on Zen Buddhist philosophy at the Department of Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna. In 2008 established the Association of Comparative Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Education (“KoPhil”) in Vienna; since then active as the head/president of the association. Leading the “KoPhil Lecture Series” at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. (Language: German, English)

Collaboration with the Polish Academy of Sciences: In 2006/07, 2009, 2011, designing and chairing the PAN/Vienna interdisciplinary lecture series, symposium and publications; held the guest lecture “Phenomenology and Buddhist Philosophy” at PAN/Warsaw in 2014. Publication in “Dialogue and Universalism” (IFiSPAN) vol. 25/3 (Heidegger and Dōgen), vol. 27/2 (The Values of Contradiction), and vol. 28/2 (Interdisciplinary Epistemology of Quantum Physics).

Leslie Holmes has been a Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne since 1988, and was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus in 2014. He was President of the International Council for Central and East European Studies 2000-2005, President of the Australian Political Studies Association 1991-2, and President of the Australasian Association for Communist and Post-Communist Studies 2005-7. He has been a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia since 1995, and regularly teaches advanced courses on corruption at the University of Bologna, the Graduate School of Social Research in Warsaw, and the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna . Leslie has published seven single-authored books – The Policy Process in Communist States (Sage, 1981); Politics in the Communist World (Oxford UP, 1987); The End of Communist Power (Oxford UP, 1993); Post-Communism (Duke UP, 1997); Rotten States? (Duke UP, 2006); Communism (Oxford UP, 2009); and Corruption (Oxford UP, 2015). With John Dryzek, he also co-authored Post-Communist Democratization (Cambridge UP, 2002). He has edited or co-edited a further seven books, and published almost 100 articles, chapters and booklets. His work has been translated into twelve languages. Prof. Holmes’ principal research areas are Europe and Asia, with particular reference to corruption, organised crime and human trafficking. In this context, he has been a consultant to the World Bank, Transparency International, the UNODC, the OECD, and the Swiss Government. His research has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and by the Norwegian Research Council.

Sławomir Kapralski is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Pedagogical University of Kraków. He holds a Ph.D in Sociology from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His research focuses on nationalism, ethnicity and identity, collective memory, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and the Roma communities in Europe. Slawomir Kapralski does research in Sociological Theory, Social Theory and Cultural History. He is a member of the Gypsy Lore Society, the European Association for Holocaust Studies, and the European Academic Network on Romani Studies. His current project is ‘The Fight Against Antisemitism and Antigypsyism in Poland: Monitoring, Intervention, Education’.

Assistant Professor Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences

Professor Martin Krygier is Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at the University of New South Wales, in Australia and recurrent visiting professor at the Graduate School of Social Research, Warsaw. His research interests include the conditions and nature of the rule of law, and challenges involved in developing and sustaining it in post-communist Europe and other societies scarred by dictatorship and conflict. His writings seek to meld politically engaged legal and political theory with social theory, observation and experience and he has written extensively both for academic audiences and for journals of ideas and public debate. His works include Philip Selznick: Ideals in the World (2012), and, as editor, Rethinking the Rule of Law after Communism (2005) and Spreading Democracy and the Rule of Law? (2006). In 2016, he received the Denis Leslie Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory for his writings on the rule of law. During his fellowship, he conducted research critically examining scholarship on the rule of law and attempts to promote it globally for a book for scholars, activists, and citizens alike, entitled “What’s the Point of the Rule of Law?” He also worked on a closely connected project on populism and constitutional democracy.

Sociologist, PhD (2007), trained in sociology at the University of Warsaw and at the Graduate School for Social Research. She is a qualitative researcher specialized in ethnographic research of economic practices. Author of the monograph „Indywidualizacja a nowe formy wspólnotowości” (2009) focused on the social and cultural consequences of the individualization process, identity formation, and the emergence of new forms of communities in online spaces. Her current areas of academic interest include culturally oriented economic sociology and sociology of money. She works at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology as a principal investigator of the research grant on financial practices in young family households. Her work is financed by National Science Center Poland and was supported by the Foundation for Polish Science within the program Skills: Trainings and FNP Mentoring. In 2017 she joined the Max Planck Partner Group for the Sociology of Economic Life. She is currently working on the monograph on different models of financial arrangements in the household.

Professor of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL School of Slavonic and East European  Studies (SSEES) and Professor Rutgers University (Political Science Dept)

Andrzej Leder studied philosophy and medicine in the Warsaw University and prepared his PhD in philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He works on the political philosophy and philosophy of culture, applying phenomenological and psychoanalytical tools, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis. Has published books in Polish: Unconsciousness Seen as the Void (2001) The Teaching of Freud in the Time of Sein und Zeit (2007), The Scratch on the Glass (2016) and two collections of philosophical essays, awarded a literary prize in 2004, available in 2013 in English as The Changing Guise of Myths. His main work in political philosophy Sleepwalking the Revolution. Exercise in Historical Logics (2014) was vastly discussed in Poland. He has also published articles in English and French philosophical reviews.

Adam Lipszyc, prof. PAN, works in the Insitute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Science. He teaches in Collegium Civitas and at the Franz Kafka University of Muri. He has published four books and co-edited four others, mostly focusing on traces of Jewish theology in the 20th century thought and literature. His most recent publications include a study of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language and justice (Justice on the Tip of the Tongue, 2012) and a study of Paul Celan’s poetry (The Time of the Poem, 2015). He edited and co-translated into Polish two volumes of essays, one by Gershom Scholem and one by Walter Benjamin.

Professor in sociology and anthropology at the Jagiellonian University. Founder and head of the Institute for European Studies at the Jagiellonian University, and one of the main authors of the European Studies curriculum in Poland.

He has broad international teaching experience from Europe and America. Previous teaching and research appointments include Université Montpellier IIII Paul Valéry, University of Exeter, University College Dublin, University of Chicago, Oxford University, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, University of Edinburgh and St. John’s College, Oxford.

His research interests cover identity issues such as nationalism, minorities and ethnicity, the development of European citizenship, migration and the reconstruction of identity, the ethnic origin of a nation and construction of identities as well as the development of the idea of Europe.

Sociologist and political scientist. He specializes in comparative political science and political sociology. He researchers voters’ choices and behaviors as well as political party systems. Head of the Center for the Study of Democracy at SWPS University. Recurring Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Budapest. Former Visiting Professor at the following universities in the United States: Duke University in North Carolina, Wisconsin University of Madison-Wisconsin, and Rutgers University in New Jersey. Member of editorial boards of numerous political science journals, including: European Journal of Political Research, Political Studies, European Union Politics, Populism Journal of Elections, and Public Opinion and Parties. His book, Post-Communist Party Systems, published by Cambridge University Press is his main publication.

Assistant Professor Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences

Dr. Annamaria Orla-Bukowska is a social anthropologist, specializing in issues of multiculturalism. Her research interests are: cultural minorities, institutionalised inequality, “Polish-Jewish” relations (religious, cultural, social, political), sociology of emotions – negative emotions’ positive consequences for collective identity. Her major field of concentration is Polish Christian-Polish Jewish relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. She teaches extensively for other departments of the Jagiellonian, but also in postgraduate programs at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and The Graduate School for Social Research in Warsaw. She has guest-lectured in the USA, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Greece, Australia, and Israel.

Jan Pakulski is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Stanford Center for Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University. His current research interests focus on elites, democratisation, post-communism, social movements, and social inequality. His publications include Elite Recruitment in Australia (ANU Press, 1980), Social Movements (Longman Cheshire, 1991), Postmodernization (Sage, 1992; with S. Crook and M. Waters), The Death of Class (Sage, 1996; with M. Waters), Postcommunist Elites and Democracy in Eastern Europe (Macmillan, edited in 1998 with J. Higley and W. Wesolowski), Globalizing Inequalities (Allen and Unwin, 2004),Toward Leader Democracy (Anthem, 2012; with Andras Korosenyi), Violence and the State (University of Manchester Press, edited in 2014 with M. Killingsworth and M. Sussex) and Political Leadership in Decline: Careers of Australian Parliamentarians (Palgrave 2015). He was co-winner of Henry Mayer Prize for the best political science article published in Australia and winner of the Stephen Crook Memorial Prize for the Best Authored Book in Australian Sociology.

Professor Peter Przytula has studied in England, Sweden, United States, Israel, and Poland. He holds two Master’s degrees, one from Lodz University and another one from the University of Minnesota where he also earned his PhD Peter Przytula works as a Full Professor of public relations and advertising at St. Cloud State University (Minnesota) and serves as a visiting professor at Clark University (Lodz). He has lectured all over Central Europe (conducting well over fifty workshops and seminars in PR methods) and is the author of “Introduction to Public Relations”. Professor Przytula has worked with Polish branches of American public relations agencies both as an educator and a consultant.

Assistant Professor, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences

Professor of sociology, Corresponding Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Director of the the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Main areas of research: sociology of political and economic institutions, post-communist transformation. Among last publications: „The Legacy of Polish Solidarity“, co-edited, Peter Lang Edition, Frankfurt am Main, 2015. Lives in Warsaw.

Michał Sitek, PhD, is the Research Director in the Educational Research  Institute. He is also a member of the Programme Council of the project  “Quality and effectiveness of education – strengthening of institutional research capabilities.”

Sociologist, graduate of the University of Silesia and of the Central European University. Participant in the International Summer School of Political Sciences and International Relations of the Stefan Batory Foundation (1996, 1997 and 1998).

In 1999-2004 he was an expert at the Government Centre for Strategic Studies and in 2003 a visiting scholar at Columbia University (New York). He specialises in educational research, institutional analyses and public-policy research. He is an author of several publications on education, healthcare and public administration. He also belongs to the Polish team of OECD PISA. He acted as the TEDS-M 2008 survey coordinator in Poland.

Irina Tomescu-Dubrow, Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and program manager of the Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program, CONSIRT (consirt.osu.edu). Her main interest is in social stratification and comparative sociology. She is co- PI of the Polish Panel Study POLPAN 1988-2018 (funded by the Polish National Science Centre) and co-PI in the Survey Data Recycling grant (funded by the US National Science Foundation).

Prof. Szymon Wróbel is a professor of philosophy. He graduated in psychology (specialization: clinical psychology) at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. For fifteen years he was associated with the Pedagogical and Artistic Faculty of Adam Mickiewicz University in Kalisz. His main areas of scientific interest are: power theory, theory of literature, contemporary linguistics and cognitive science, and the application of psychoanalytic ideas in political theories. He is the author of numerous books and articles scattered in various scientific journals. His recent books include “Deferring the Self” and “Grammar and Glamor of Cooperation”, “ Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind”, “Language and Action” published in 2013 and 2014 by the Peter Lang publishing house, while in Polish: Ćwiczenia z przyjażni, Lektury retroaktywne, Rodowody wspólczesnej myśli filozoficznej.

Ilona Wysmułek is an Assistant Professor in the research group “Comparative Analysis of Social Inequality” at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Since 2013, Ilona has worked in the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN (polpan.org) and in the SDR survey data harmonization project, where she now supervises work on over 3,000 national surveys of 24 international projects (dataharmonization.org). She serves as the RC09 editor for the International Sociological Association and is an active member of the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network. Her main research interests cover topics of survey research on corruption and meritocracy, methodology of empirical research, research design and data quality.