Rafał Smoczyński - Biography#

Rafal Smoczynski is a sociologist, currently associate professor at Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and head of the Religious Studies Department. His broad research interests encompass social control, economic sociology, the sociology of elites, and the sociology of religion. Characteristic of his work in all these fields is sensitivity to the historic peripherality of his country (and of Central and Eastern Europe generally), which leads to a critique of western bias in much social theory and political philosophy.

Smoczynski completed his PhD in sociology in 2007, after which he was employed as a Lecturer at the Warsaw School of Journalism (2007-2012). From 2009, he was Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. After defending his Habilitation thesis in 2016, he was promoted to Associate Professor. In 2024 he was promoted to serve as Head of the Religious Studies Department.

During these years at the Academy, he has accumulated considerable experience in teaching courses (inside and outside Poland), and examining dissertations (both PhD and Habilitation levels).

While the bulk of his work has been written in Polish and published in Poland, Smoczynski has also published with international publishers such as Oxford University Press and de Gruyter, and in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, Current Sociology, and Theory and Society. He has high level English language skills.

Smoczynski has has participated in research projects funded inter alia by the European Commission, the Research Council of Norway, DAAD, National Sciences Centre (Poland), Visegrad Fund, and the Korea Foundation. He has been a visiting professor at Tsing Hua University (China), the London School of Economics, the University of Portland, Monash University, Seoul National University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Ferdowsi University, the University of Ljubljana, Kanazawa University, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Northumbria University.

The last of these appointments facilitated Smocznyki's empirical research into Polish labour migrants in the UK (long-term collaboration with Ian Fitzgerald). Notable projects at home include "The Role of Catholic Convictions in Shaping Attitudes of Business People” (2011 - 2013) and later collaborations with T. Zarycki, T. Warczok and others, investigating distinctive features of Polish social structure that have endured to shape "cultural citizenship" after socialism. A hallmark of Smoczynski's work, both in the projects on labour migrants in the UK and in researching domestic elites, is the creative adaptation of ideas derived from Pierre Bourdieu (habitus, cultural capital, field analysis etc) to social conditions very different from those explored by the great French sociologist.