Jacek Kucharczyk

Jacek Kucharczyk is President of the Institute of Public Affairs, one of Poland’s leading think tanks. He received PhD in sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He studied at the Graduate School for Social Research in Warsaw, Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, the University of Kent at Canterbury (MA in philosophy) and Warsaw University (MA in English studies). In the 1980s, he was active in independent student movement and clandestine publishing. Kucharczyk has been a co-founder and board member of a number of international NGOs, including Prague Center for Civil Society and the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) in Brussels. From 2009 to 2015, he was board member of the National School of Public Administration in Warsaw. He has authored and edited articles, reports, policy briefs and books on European integration, democratic governance, democracy assistance and populism. His recent publications include “Populism and Protest in Poland” in Journal of Democracy (October 1016) as well as the chapter on populism in Poland in the report Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself, which was published by the British think tank DEMOS earlier this year. Kucharczyk regularly comments on current domestic and European affairs and political developments for Polish and international media.