President of the Institute of National Remembrance

dr hab. Janusz Kurtyka

Janusz Kurtyka was born on 13th August 1960 in Kraków. He is a graduate of the History-and-Philosophy Faculty of Jagiellonian University. He completed doctoral studies at the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where in 1995 he defended his doctoral thesis in the humanities. In 2000 he received his doctoral habilitation. In 2000-2005 he was the organiser and director of the Kraków branch of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). He had been active in the democratic opposition in Kraków from 1979, was co-founder of the Independent Students Association (NZS) at Jagiellonian University’s History Institute and a member of the NZS JU founding committee. He lectured at the underground Christian Workers University. He is a scholar employed at the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (from 1985) and a member of its Scholarly Council over the 1999-2002 and 2003-2006 terms. In 1989-2000 he had been chairman of the Solidarity Trade Union of the Kraków branches of the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Janusz Kurtyka is the author of some 140 publications in the field of Polish mediaeval and early-modern history as well as the history of the anti-communist resistance movement in Poland after 1944. They include four books: ‘General Leopold “Niedźwiadek” Okulicki: 1898-1946’, ‘The Tęczyńskis. A Study of Poland’s Feudal Elite in the Middle Ages’, ‘The Tęczyński Latifundia. Estates and Owners: 14th-17th Centuries’. ‘The Reborn Kingdom. The Monarchy of Ladislaus the Short and Casimir the Great in the Light of Recent Research’. He was the co-author of numerous other publications. Since 1994 he has been the editor in chief of the ‘Freedom and Independent Historical Notebooks’, co-author of the ‘Polish Biographical Dictionary’. He chairs the Editorial Committee of the series ‘Conspiracy and Social Resistance in Poland: 1944-1956. Biographical Dictionary’. He is a member of the editorial board of the Institute of National Remembrance’s scholarly journal ‘The Apparatus of Repression in People’s Poland: 1944-1989’. Janusz Kurtyka holds volunteer functions in such organisations as the Polish Historical Society, the Society of Friends of Learning in Przemyśl and the Polish Heraldic Society. On 9th December 2005, the Sejm (lower house of parliament) of the Republic of Poland elected him to the post of President of the Institute of National Remembrance. On 29th December 2005 he was sworn in as the Institute’s President. He was a laureate of the A. Heymowski Prize (1996), the second prize in the K. Szaniawski Competition (1998), the J. Lelewel Prize (2000 and the J. Łojek Prize (2001).

He is married, with two sons.