Profile
Professor Adam Leszczyński is a historian, journalist, and a commentator.
He is a member of “Krytyka Polityczna”, a network of Polish left-wing intellectuals and a co-founder and journalist of OKO.press, a Polish investigative journalism website, and a long-standing commentator for Gazeta Wyborcza, a Polish daily. He comments regularly on current political and social affairs in the Polish online media. He also published regularly in Polityka, a Polish weekly magazine, and the Polish edition of Newsweek.
Professor Leszczyński authored numerous books on history and in the genre of literary reportage, including: Skok w nowoczesność. Polityka wzrostu w krajach peryferyjnych 1943–1980 (A Leap into Modernity. The Politics of Growth in Peripheral Countries) (2013) and Eksperymenty na biednych. Polityczny, moralny i ekonomiczny spór o to, jak pomagać skutecznie (Experimenting on the Poor. The Political, Moral, and Economic Dispute on Effective Aid” (2016). In 2017, he published a critical analysis of the contemporary generation of Poles No dno po prostu jest Polska. Dlaczego Polacy tak bardzo nie lubią swojego kraju i innych Polaków (Poland is the pits. Why Poles hate their own country and their compatriots). He was nominated for NIKE, Poland’s main literary prize, for his tome Ludowa historia Polski (A Peasant’s History of Poland) (2020) His latest book is Obrońcy pańszczyzny (The Defenders of Serfdom) (2023).
At SWPS University, he teaches classes in journalistic skills, Polish history, and political and social commentary.