Tomasz Zarycki - Biography#

Tomasz Zarycki is a Full Professor at the University of Warsaw and Deputy Director of the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies (ISS UW). His scholarship is situated at the intersection of historical sociology, sociology of elites, political geography, and the sociology of knowledge, with a focus on the structural and symbolic dependencies of Central and Eastern European societies.

His earlier research focused on political geography and regionalism in Central Europe, examining the stability of regional political cleavages and the ways in which historical borders and international contexts shaped the post-communist political landscape in Poland. This trajectory evolved into an analysis of the sociology of the intelligentsia and the role of cultural capital in peripheral and semi-peripheral contexts. He utilizes a theoretical framework that combines field theory with theories of dependence to develop relational reconstructions of the evolution of elites in Central and Eastern European countries. His recent research relies on global historical sociology, critical sociology, prosopography, and economic history to study Polish elites in trans-imperial and transnational contexts and to explain the weakness of the Polish bourgeoisie and the relative power of the intelligentsia.

Tomasz Zarycki has held several leadership positions at the University of Warsaw, including serving as Director of the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies from 2012 to 2020. His research has been supported by a series of international fellowships and visiting positions, including:

• The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) as a Johan Peter Falck Fellow
  
• London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as a Visiting Senior Fellow
  
• École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, as a Visiting Professor
  
• University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a Visiting Researcher
  
• Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) as a Fellow
  
• University College London (SSEES/UCL) as an Honorary Research Fellow

He has served as the Principal Investigator for numerous research projects funded by the National Science Center (NCN), the Polish Ministry of Science, and the Volkswagen Foundation. In 2023, he received the Bronisław Malinowski Award from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) for his monograph on the Polish elite and language sciences.

Tomasz Zarycki has authored monographs published by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals that define the contemporary sociological landscape, including Theory and Society, European Journal of Social Theory, Current Sociology, Sociological Forum, Ethnic and Racial Studies, East European Politics and Societies, Europe-Asia Studies, and the Journal of World-Systems Research. Zarycki also directs the Center for Sociological Research at ISS UW and has edited several volumes with Polish and international publishers.