Our People
Dr Katarzyna Grzybowska Walecka
Fellow, Visiting Fellow
Department Head of Political Sociology and Assistant Professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University
Kellogg College
MSc Warsaw, MSc, PhD EUI
Dr Katarzyna Walecka is a political scientist specialising in the politics of Central and Eastern Europe in comparative perspective. She is Head of the Department of Political Sociology and Assistant Professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. She is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Polish Politics, forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2025. Her own research focuses on youth political participation, and she is preparing a monograph on the radicalisation of Polish youth, based on extensive interviews with participants in the annual right-wing March of Independence in Poland. More broadly, her work spans political science and political sociology, with particular attention to the international activity of European political parties, democratisation processes, and illiberal trends in the region.
Dr Walecka earned her PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, after completing a master’s degree in political science at Warsaw University and a master’s in Social Research Methods at EUI. She has held fellowships and visiting positions at leading academic institutions, including the Jean Monnet Fellowship at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (EUI), the University of Nottingham, Wadham College (as a Keeley Visiting Fellow), and REES at the University of Oxford. She has also taught politics for PPE students at Harris Manchester, Keble, and Wadham Colleges, University of Oxford.
Beyond her research and teaching, Dr Walecka has co-directed seven editions of the ECPR/ODIHR Summer School on Political Parties and Democracy, engaging students from across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Earlier in her career, she was elected one of the youngest city councillors in Warsaw and gained policy experience working with the Office for Promotion of Parliamentary Democracy at the European Parliament in Brussels and the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York. She is also co-founder of the STAN Foundation, which promotes academic knowledge and supports the education of young leaders.