Directors
Director of the Doctoral School
Prof. dr hab. Paweł Stępień
b. 1969, literature specialist, professor at the University of Warsaw, in 1991-2008 employee of the Institute of Polish Literature (Faculty of Polish Studies), since 2008 employee of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies “Artes Liberales”, and currently of the Faculty “Artes Liberales”.
1991 – MA (Faculty of Polish Studies, University of Warsaw), 1996 – PhD (Faculty of Polish Studies), 2003 – Habilitated Doctor (Faculty of Polish Studies), 2015 – Professor (Faculty of “Artes Liberales”).
Since 2007 a member of the editorial committee of the yearbook “Prace Filologiczne. Literary Studies Series’. Since 2010 member of the editorial board of ‘Przegląd Humanistyczny’. Since 2012 member of the editorial committee of the series Studia Staropolskie. Series Nova (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences). Since 2019 member of the editorial committee of ‘Pamiętnik Literacki’ (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences).
2018-2019 Visiting Scholar at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.
Since 2011 supervisor of the Interdisciplinary Circle of Old Polish Culture of the MISH (Interdisciplinary Individual Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences) UW. In 2002-2005 Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Polish Studies. From 2007-2016 Plenipotentiary of the Rector of the University of Warsaw for Educational Quality. Since 2017 he has been in charge of the study path Between East and West. History of Culture and Thought (a programme enabling a double degree, run in cooperation with the University of Cologne and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow). In 2018, at the invitation of the University of Cambridge, he taught Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture of Poland (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages).
Scientific interests
Works of ancient literature as a microcosm of culture, Polish literature in the context of philosophy and theology, especially medieval religious literature in the context of theology, aesthetics, poetics of the time, Platonic inspirations of Polish literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, libertinism in Polish poetry of the 17th century, Polish poetry of the 20th century in the face of the cultural traditions of ancient periods.
Non-scientific interests
Felis domestica
Deputy Director
Dr hab. Karol Samsel
He works as an assistant professor in the Department of Romantic Literature of the Faculty of Polish Studies at the UW. Since 2019, he has been the head of the Studio of the History of Drama 1864-1939. In 2022, he finalised his doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw, thus obtaining the second doctoral degree.
He is the author of the books Norwid – Conrad. Epics in the Perspective of Modernism (2014), The Invalid of Intention. Studies on Norwid (2017), co-editor of the volumes Universality of Comedy. Aleksander Fredro w 220. rocznicę urodzin (2015), Poeci-studenci podziemnego Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego wobec romantyzmu (2018) and Dramaty Cypriana Norwida. Texts – Contexts – Intertexts (2019).
His research includes issues of the Polish background of Joseph Conrad’s writings, especially the Polish-Romantic intertextuality of his writings. He has published in Pamiętnik Literacki, Studia Norwidiana, Yearbook of Conrad Studies (Poland), Pracach Filologiczne. Literary Studies’, as well as ‘Philo-Sophia’. For the years 2015-2017 and in 2019, he co-taught a seminar of the Institute of Philosophy at the UW, ‘Selected Problems of Philosophy of Literature’, with Dr Aleksandra Horecka.