Warsaw University, in particular the Faculty of ‘Artes Liberales’, has a solid and acknowledged research and administrative staff and develops significant interdisciplinary group and individual research projects, which will be integrated within the activities of the project. The Faculty originated as the Centre for the Study of the Classical Tradition [Osrodek Badan nad Tradycja Antyczna, OBTA], but over the last 25 years developed into a fully-fledged centre for interdisciplinary studies in the humanities and this multi-faceted approach is applied also in the field of early modern and religious studies, represented at the Faculty by such units as the Centre for the Study of the Reformation and Intellectual Culture in Early Modern Europe, the Ioannes Dantiscus Correspondence Project or the Culture of the Polish Lithuanian-Commonwealth Research Laboratory or the Committee on the Byzantine Studies, whose members work on such aspects of religious studies as the role of religion in early modern Republic of Letters, relationships between religion and diplomacy, relations between theology and other disciplines of knowledge, social impact of religious ideas on social life, book history and religious texts in early modern period.

This interdisciplinary approach to the study of the past and religious culture is enabled by the fact that among the faculty members are scholars representing various methodological schools and disciplines, among them history, art history, philology, philosophy and theology. Among the current research carried out at the Faculty one should name scholarly initiatives focused on the intersection of church history, diplomacy and history of scholarship (correspondence of Ioannes Dantiscus), study of political theology from the late Middle Ages to present, studies focused on technology and the humanities, and research on early modern chronological controversies which originated at the intersection of natural sciences, humanism and religious culture.

Apart from the developed network between the Faculty and European research institutions, it also characterizes by a well-established and long-lasting tradition scholarly cooperation with scholars from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and as such, the Faculty should be able to serve as facilitator of further contacts between the members of the project and scholars from these countries, providing thus an opportunity for further strengthening relations between the EU and non-EU scholars, exchange of ideas, and integration of research infrastructures.

The Faculty has a good experience with the national media: the faculty members are often cited as experts by the leading newspapers (e.g. Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita) and weekly opinion magazines (e.g. Polityka) and are frequent visitors to radio and TV programmes aimed at popularizing research to wider audience (Polish Radio 2; TVP Kultura). Among the members of the faculty there is a group of people dedicated to organizing public events for teenagers through collaboration with Warsaw high schools (special classes organized on a regular basis) and with National Fund for Children (Krajowy Fundusz na rzecz Dzieci; winter school on early modem culture organized since 2016 in Luslawice). The Faculty members are also active users of social media: the Faculty, the liberal arts college, research units and projected based at the faculty use various websites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to increase the audience for their research and translate it into a more popular form. They are also active bloggers, which is yet another channel for distributing the ideas and research results achieved at the Faculty.

Key Personnel

Michal Choptiany, Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor and Head of the Centre for the Study of the Reformation and Early Modern Intellectual Culture. He received PhD in Literary Studies from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow in 2013 and since that time he continues his research on late medieval and early modern chronological and calendrical controversies. His research interests include also Antitrinitarianism, Irenicism in early modern Poland-Lithuania, history of the book and reading in Central Europe and inter-confessional collaboration in the Republic of Letters. His publications include co-edited volumes of studies; editions of correspondence (J. Hevelius, Correspondence with Peter Crüger, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, forthcoming), and articles and reviews in journals like History and Theory, Renaissance Quarterly, Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce, Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, Zapiski Historyczne.

Relevant publications and/or other products and services

S. J. G. Burton, M. Choptiany, and P. Wilczek (eds.), Protestant Majorities and Minorities: Confessional Boundaries and Contested Identities, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming

in 2017/18 (Refo500 Academic Series).

M. Choptiany and P. Wilczek (eds.) (2017), Antytrynitaryzm w Pierwszej Rzeczypospolitej. Zródla – konteksty – oddzialywanie, Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, in print (Kultura I Rzeczypospolitej w Dialogu z Europa, vol. 10).

Wilczek P. (2016), Polonia Reformata. Essays on the Polish Reformation(s), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

P. Wilczek and S. J. G. Burton (eds.) The Brest Bible (1563): History, Language, Culture, Theology, in: Reformation and Renaissance Review, 17:1 (2015).