Keynotes & Invited Talks
This page presents selected keynote lectures, invited university talks, inaugural lectures and commissioned contributions to academic and policy debates. Together, they reflect the development of my research—from comparative literature, intellectual history and memory studies to the contemporary geopolitics of knowledge, research policy and the public responsibilities of universities.
2026
“Science Communication as an Infrastructure of Trust: Between the Translation of Knowledge and the Crisis of Authority”
Conference Science Communication: Idea and Practice, 17 June 2026.
Opening lecture
Science communication is frequently understood as the translation of specialist knowledge into language accessible to wider audiences. This model remains important, but it is no longer sufficient in an environment shaped by political polarisation, fragmented media systems and declining trust in institutions.
The paper approached science communication as an infrastructure of trust: a set of institutions, professional practices and relationships that connect researchers, universities, journalists, public authorities and different social groups. Trust cannot be produced by simplifying knowledge or by communicating scientific conclusions only after research has been completed. It depends on transparency about uncertainty, visible standards of integrity and sustained forms of public engagement.
The argument also addressed the contemporary crisis of authority. Universities cannot assume that institutional prestige automatically secures public confidence. Scientific authority must be continuously supported through responsible communication, credible procedures and a willingness to explain not only what researchers know, but also how knowledge is produced, evaluated and revised.
2025
“A Central European Perspective on the History of the Humanities”
Digital Round Table on Global Perspectives on the History of the Humanities, Society for the History of the Humanities and University of Amsterdam, online, 5 December 2025.
Invited contribution
The contribution examined how the history of the humanities changes when it is reconstructed from Central Europe rather than exclusively from the discipline’s dominant Western European and North American centres.
Central and Eastern Europe was not merely a recipient of intellectual models developed elsewhere. It was a space of theoretical production, institutional experimentation, migration and multilingual exchange. Structuralism, world history, comparative literature and different forms of postcolonial reflection were shaped through relations connecting the region with Western academic centres and non-European worlds.
The presentation argued that a genuinely global history of the humanities requires more than adding regional case studies to an established narrative. It must reconsider the geography through which theoretical innovation and intellectual authority have conventionally been mapped.
“European Innovation Policy and the Role of the Science Sector”
Opening lecture, Academic Entrepreneurship Forum Funds for Science, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, 27 October 2025.
Inaugural lecture
The lecture examined the role of universities and research organisations within European innovation policy.
Europe’s challenge is not simply to produce more excellent research. It must also create institutions capable of translating knowledge into technological, social and economic value without reducing universities to service providers for existing markets. Effective innovation systems require long-term research capacity, professional knowledge-transfer structures, access to investment and stronger connections among universities, public institutions and companies.
The lecture argued that commercialisation should be understood as one possible pathway of knowledge valorisation rather than its only measure. The public value of research also includes better policy, social resilience, cultural understanding and the capacity to respond to long-term challenges that may not generate immediate commercial returns.
“Central Europe: A Cultural and Geopolitical Concept in Transformation”
Kobe University, Kobe, April 2025.
Invited university lecture
The lecture presented Central Europe not as a stable geographical region, but as a cultural and geopolitical concept whose boundaries and symbolic centres have repeatedly changed.
During the Cold War, Central Europe was often invoked as a space culturally connected with the West but politically incorporated into the Soviet sphere. After 1989, the concept became associated mainly with the successful integration of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary into European and transatlantic institutions.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed this geography again. Ukraine has become central to debates about Europe’s political borders, imperial legacies and security. The lecture argued that Central Europe moves east whenever Europe itself must redefine its commitments and the location of its geopolitical frontier.
2022
“Anniversary Celebrations Half a Century Ago: Global Copernicus, Local Memory”
Dies Natalis Copernici, District Museum in Toruń, 19 February 2022.
Invited public lecture
The lecture examined the global celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus’s birth in 1973.
Although Copernicus was strongly associated with Toruń and Polish national memory, the anniversary became a worldwide event. Commemorations were organised across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, connecting scientific history with cultural diplomacy, Cold War politics and local institutional ambitions.
The lecture argued that anniversaries do not simply preserve knowledge about historical figures. They reshape it. Universities, museums, cities, governments and international organisations produce successive images of Copernicus, adding new interpretative layers to the existing cultural memory of the astronomer.
2021
“Global Knowledge Transfer: Is Complexity Science a Remedy for the Weaknesses of ‘Presumptive History’?”
Institute for Advanced Study, University of Amsterdam, 14 December 2021.
Invited seminar
The seminar presented the conceptual foundations of my research on multidirectional knowledge transfer from Central and Eastern Europe.
Histories of intellectual exchange are often constructed from a limited number of prominent individuals and institutions. From these cases, researchers infer much larger processes of influence, migration and disciplinary transformation. This may result in “presumptive history”: an account that is plausible but insufficiently able to model the many variables involved in knowledge circulation.
The lecture explored whether approaches derived from complexity science could help historians analyse interactions among migration, language, institutions, personal networks, political disruption and access to resources. The aim was not to replace archival research with abstract modelling, but to develop better tools for understanding knowledge transfer as a nonlinear and multidirectional process.
2018
“Millennium of Christianity among the Slavs: Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia”
Twenty-First Annual Midwest Medieval Slavic Workshop, University of Chicago, 20 April 2018.
Invited workshop lecture
The lecture compared twentieth-century celebrations of the adoption of Christianity in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia.
These commemorations referred to medieval events, but their meanings were shaped by contemporary conflicts over statehood, religion, nationality and political legitimacy. Governments, churches and intellectuals used anniversaries to construct rival accounts of collective origins and competing visions of European belonging.
The lecture provided an early comparative framework for the later Millennium research project.
“A Laboratory for Humanists, Scientists in Everyday Life: A Shot of Vodka and Cages for Lice”
Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago, 5 February 2018.
Invited lecture
The lecture examined the informal and material conditions of scientific work through the history of the Polish-American virologist and oncologist Ludwik Gross.
Accounts of scientific discovery usually emphasise formal methods, publications and institutional affiliations. Yet knowledge is also produced through laboratory routines, personal relationships, practical improvisation and forms of hospitality that rarely appear in official histories.
The lecture reconstructed scientific work as an interaction among researchers, organisms, instruments and everyday environments. The deliberately unusual title referred to episodes illustrating how intellectual and experimental practices depend on material conditions and informal social relations.
2017
“Large-Scale History of the Middle Ages: From Rus’ to Western Africa”
Twentieth Annual Midwest Medieval Slavic Workshop, University of Chicago, 21 April 2017.
Invited workshop lecture
The lecture placed medieval Rus’ within a wider comparative history extending beyond conventional European regional divisions.
It asked how the history of Eastern Europe changes when analysed through large-scale systems of exchange connecting Byzantium, Scandinavia, the Eurasian steppe, the Mediterranean and Africa. Such an approach makes it possible to move beyond national genealogies and to treat medieval societies as participants in wider networks of trade, religion and political authority.
“The Culture of Emigration: The Case of Left-Wing Exiled Intellectuals”
Slavic Colloquium, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 13 February 2017.
Invited colloquium lecture
The lecture examined Polish left-wing intellectuals who moved to the United States and other Western countries during the twentieth century.
Political emigration did not simply transfer already formed ideas from one national setting to another. Exiled scholars changed languages, disciplinary environments and political audiences. They had to renegotiate their intellectual identities while remaining connected, often critically, with the cultures and political movements from which they had emerged.
The lecture treated emigration as a form of knowledge transfer shaped by translingualism, institutional adaptation and tension between political commitment and intellectual autonomy.
2016
“Comparative Literature and World(-)System Theory: An Anti-Eurocentric Perspective on European Literature”
Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, 21 November 2016.
Invited university lecture
The lecture reconsidered European literature from the perspective of world-system analysis.
It argued that European literary history cannot be reconstructed exclusively through the traditions of its established cultural centres. It must include relations connecting cores, internal semi-peripheries and non-European literary systems.
An anti-Eurocentric approach does not remove Europe from the analysis. It reconstructs Europe through the unequal exchanges, translations and appropriations that connected its literatures with the wider world.
“Mytho-Logic of Memory: The Battle of Kosovo, 1389”
Nineteenth Annual Midwest Medieval Slavic Workshop, University of Chicago, 15 April 2016.
Invited workshop lecture
The lecture examined the cultural memory of the Battle of Kosovo and its role in the construction of modern Serbian identity.
The historical event of 1389 cannot be separated from the later literary, religious and political narratives through which it acquired symbolic meaning. Epic poetry, national historiography, religious traditions and modern political discourse transformed Kosovo into a foundational story of sacrifice, defeat and collective continuity.
The lecture introduced the concept of the “mytho-logic of memory”: the process through which historical knowledge and mythic narrative interact rather than functioning as simple opposites.
2015
“Manfred Kridl, East-Central European Emigration and Slavic Studies—not Only—at Columbia”
East Central European Center, Department of Slavic Languages and Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, 10 April 2015.
Invited lecture
The lecture reconstructed the intellectual and institutional history of Manfred Kridl, a Polish literary scholar who continued his academic career in the United States after the Second World War.
Kridl’s work at Columbia University provides a case study of knowledge transfer through political emigration. He brought Central European theoretical traditions into a new institutional environment, participated in the development of American Slavic studies and helped support academic institutions in post-war Poland.
The lecture argued that intellectual migration should not be described as a one-way movement from a European periphery to an American centre. Kridl remained embedded in transatlantic professional, institutional and personal networks that enabled knowledge and resources to circulate in several directions.