Prof. Jerzy Kloczowsky

Prof. Jerzy Kloczowsky

Born in 1924, he served in the national army and later participated in the Warsaw uprising. Since 1991 he has been director of the Institute of Central Eastern Europe, representative of the International Federation of Institutes of Central Eastern Europe and head of the UNESCO Polish Committee. He is a former member of the UNESCO Executive Council, and has served as head of the Polish delegation at the UNESCO General Conference numerous times. He is also a founding member of the Polish Council of the European Movement and professor at the Catholic University of Lublin (head of the Polish Archaeology and Polish History and Culture Departments).

In 1957 he became the head of the Institute of Church Historical Geography in Poland. He is a co-head of the International Committee on Comparative Church History and a member of the Polish Committee on Comparative Church History at the Committee of Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is also the head of the UNESCO Combined Committee and International Committee on Historical Sciences (CISH).

Kloczowsky is a scholar of Polish culture and the history of Christianity in Poland. From 1945 to 1948 he studied at A. Mickewicz University in Poznan and later at M. Kopernik University in Torun. In 1950 he received his doctoral degree in the Humanities and since then he has been teaching at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 1967 he was appointed extraordinary professor and since 1974 he has been working as a regular professor. Kloczowsky is the author and editor of over 600 scholarly works in History, including The Church in Poland (1968-1970), Christianity and History (1990) and The History of Central and Eastern Europe (2000).