Welcome to the Institute of History

 

The Institute of History was established in 1918 as one of the very first institutes of a newly opened University. Teachers and researchers have always been its strength. Among our most eminent scholars it is worth to note Stanisław Smolka, Stanisław Ptaszycki, Leon Białkowski, Aleksander Kossowski, Andrzej Wojtkowski, Jerzy Kłoczowski, Władysław Rostocki, Marzena Pollakówna, Zygmunt Sułowski, Edward Zwolski, Stanisław Litak, Urszula Borkowska, Wiesław Müller and Stanisław Olczak.

Currently, the Institute of History employs sixty scholars whose research is focused on the history of Christianity in Poland from the early Middle Age to the Present Day, ecclesiastical structures, biographies, piety and religious practice. Significant research is conducted on the history of Byzantine culture and the religions of the Antiquity, in particular ancient civilizations of the Near East and Greece. Medieval studies cover a wide range of topics, including political and military history, religious history, economic history, and social and religious history. Studies of the modern period have propounded new approaches, in particular to historical geography and prosopography. Over recent decades a strong research group specializing in the history of Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries has also developed and gained an international reputation. A number of research projects have been devoted to the history Eastern Orthodoxy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The history of ideas and court culture belong to new promising research areas. Studies of the nineteenth century history deal with diplomacy, the growth of the Catholic and social movements, and the role of the Catholic clergy in preserving the Polish national identity during the partitions. Research on the twentieth century history embraces a rich variety of topics from First World War to the collapse of the communist regime in Poland in the late 1980s. Among the predominating research problems it is worth to mention the history of the Catholic Church, the history of the Underground Polish State during Second World War, the resistance to communism, and the relations between the communist government of Polish People's Republic and the Roman Catholic Church.