ROTT Dariusz

Born on 23 May 1965 in Dąbrowa Górnicza; son of the railwayman Kazimierz Rott and Teodora, née Lisok. He attended Grammar School No. III in Dąbrowa Górnicza from 1980. After completing advanced secondary education in 1984 he studied Polish philology at the University of Silesia (UŚ) in Katowice. He made his debut in 1985 with the article Kalejdoskop – Wilkasy ’85 (Kaleidoscope – Wilkasy 85) and the poem Chiromancja (Chiromancy), which were both published in the socio-literary monthly "Okolice" (nos 11-12). From 1988 to 1992, he worked as a Polish language teacher at Grammar School No. III in Dąbrowa Górnicza. He graduated with a master's degree in 1989, writing a thesis titled Staropolskie relacje z podróży (Old Polish Travel Writing). He was also declared the best graduate at UŚ for the academic year 1988/89. On 1 November 1988, while still a student, he was appointed trainee assistant at the Department of the History of Old Polish, Enlightenment and Romantic Literature at the Institute of Polish Literature and Culture at UŚ (which in 1991 became the Institute of the Study of Polish Literature – INoLP and was named after Ireneusz Opacki in 2005). On 1 November 1989 he was appointed assistant at the Institute of the History of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. His research and teaching focused on Old Polish literature as well as on Polish and Latin literature in Silesia. He also worked on travel writing and mass communications. He was head of the Section of Old Polish Literature in the Scientific Circle of Polish Philology Scholars at UŚ between 1989 and 1997. From 1993 to 1995, he also worked as a senior inspector in the voivode's bureau at the Voivodeship Office in Katowice, editing its information bulletin ("Biuletyn Informacyjny Urzędu Wojewódzkiego w Katowicach") until 1995 and co-editing the architecture and planning quarterly "Architektura i Krajobraz. Przestrzenne problemy regionu Górnego Śląska" between 1994 and 1996. He was awarded a scholarship by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) in 1994. That year he defended his doctoral thesis, Staropolskie choreografie. Początki – rozwój – przemiany gatunku (Old Polish Choreographies: The origins, development and transformation of a genre) at UŚ. It was supervised by Prof. Jan Malicki. In 1995, he was appointed lecturer and made a member of the Council of the Faculty of Philology at UŚ, while also serving as secretary to the rector of UŚ until 1997. He was a member of the editorial board of the humanities journal "Humanistyczne Zeszyty Naukowe. Prawa Człowieka" (1995-97 and again in 1999). Between 1996 and 2003, he was UŚ press officer. He co-founded the Pallas Silesia Foundation for Neo-Latin Studies (Fundacja na Rzecz Neolatynistyki „Pallas Silesia”), where he was appointed deputy chair in 1996 before serving as chair from 2002 to 2008. The foundation was established with the goal of promoting research on the multi-cultural heritage of Silesia. He was co-editor of the series Biblioteka Fundacji „Pallas Silesia” (Pallas Silesia Foundation Library) from 1997, while also serving on the editorial board of the bi-annual "Pallas Silesia", where he became editor-in-chief in 1999. He became a member of the Katowice branch of the Literary History Commission of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1996. He also served as an expert for the Ministry of National Education (MEN), assessing school textbooks, curricula and teaching methods. Between 1997 and 2006, he was editor-in-chief and later a member of the Programme Council of the monthly UŚ bulletin, "Gazeta Uniwersytecka Uniwersytetu Śląskiego". From 1998 to 2002, he was a member of the UŚ Senate and the Council of the Faculty of Philology, while also serving on the UŚ College of Electors from 1999 to 2012. Between 1999 and 2002, he was deputy secretary of the Board of the Social Educational Association (Społeczne Towarzystwo Edukacyjne) in Katowice. From 2002 he was vice-president of the Viribus Unitis Foundation for Supporting UŚ and Development of Local Government among Youth (since 2008: Foundation for the Support of Education and Development of Local Government among Youth [Fundacja na Rzecz Wspierania Edukacji i Rozwoju Samorządności wśród Młodzieży]). He was awarded a habilitation degree in 2002 from UŚ for his study Bracia czescy w dawnej Polsce. Działalność literacka, twórcy, recepcja (The Unity of the Brethren in Old Poland: Literary activities, writers and reception) and made doctor with habilitation in 2003. That year he was appointed associate professor at the Polish Teachers' Union Higher School of Education in Warsaw, where he was appointed full professor in 2008. He also taught at the Chair of Polish Studies at the Academy of Technology and Humanities in Bielsko-Biała from 2003 to 2009, at the UŚ School of Management in Katowice from 2004 to 2007, at the Higher School of Marketing and Management in Sosnowiec from 2005 to 2010, and at the University of Occupational Safety Management (WSZOP) in Katowice from 2004 to 2006, where in 2004/05 he was associate dean for academic affairs and then head of the Department of Social Sciences and Psychology until 2006. He was a member of the Main Council of Higher Education (later the Main Council of Science and Higher Education), serving as its press officer from 2003, while from 2006 to 2009 he was deputy chair of the Education Commission and a member of the Commission for Science and International Cooperation. He served on the Main Council's Praesidium from 2010 to 2013. In 2004, he was appointed to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU) permanent Commission for the Evaluation of Textbooks and made a member of the Programme Council of the WSZOP journal "Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Zarządzania Ochroną Pracy w Katowicach". He was also a reviewer for the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. He founded and co-edited the series Studia z dziejów komunikowania masowego, which specializes in the history of mass communication and was first published in 2004. In 2005, he was appointed associate professor at UŚ. He was a co-founder of the Katowice Branch of the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society. In 2006, he joined the editorial board of the press and communication studies journals "Rocznik Prasoznawczy" and "Problemy Komunikacji Społecznej", which were published by the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication at Humanitas University in Sosnowiec, where he was also a member of the Chapter of the Humanitas Prize of the Silesian Basin. He himself won the prize in 2014. From 2006 to 2008, he was acting deputy director for teaching at INoLP at UŚ. In 2007, he served as an external expert on the National Programme Foresight Polska 2020, which was launched by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW). He was also a member of the Scientific College of the Silesian Digital Library. Also in 2007, he received the honorary Luther's Rose (Róża Lutra) award from the Katowice Diocese of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland. That year he also worked as a teacher of Polish language and history at the Silesian Social Grammar School in Chorzów. He was made state-appointed professor in 2008 and appointed head of the Department of Rhetoric at INoLP at UŚ, before later moving to the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. He was appointed to the Programme Council of the Museum of Silesian Press and Printing in Pszczyna and also served as an expert for the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBiR) in Warsaw. He was a member of the scientific committee of the international research project Genius loci, a collaboration between UŚ and Università degli Studi di Napoli – L’Orientale. He also served on the Committee on the Study of the Reformation in Poland and East-Central Europe at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies "Artes Liberales" (now the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”) at the University of Warsaw. Other roles include membership of the Silesian Basis Institute (Instytut Zagłębiowski) in Sosnowiec in 2009, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Regional Studies at the Silesian Library in Katowice (which he chaired in 2011), and of the scientific council of the Prague-based publishing house Verbum, as well as chairing the Scientific Council of the European Teaching Institute (Europejski Instytut Szkoleniowy) in Dąbrowa Górnicza in 2012. He served on the councils and committees of the scholarly journals "Bibliotekoznawstwo" (from 2009), "Communication Today" (from 2010, a bi-annual journal published by the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava), "Episteme. Czasopismo Naukowo-Kulturalne" (from 2011), and "CyberEmpathy. Visual and Media Studies Academic Journal" (from 2013, published in Rzeszo). In 2010 he took up a post at the Humanitas University in Sosnowiec, serving as director of the Institute of Philology from 2011 to 2014 and as director of the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication in 2013/14. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia, and at Collegium Civitas in Warsaw in 2014/15. He served on the jury of the 2010 M. Chowaniok reportage competition, which was organized by UŚ. In 2011, he was appointed full professor at the Chair of Media and Social Communication at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Ignatianum Academy in Krakow, where between 2012 and 2014 he was director of Doctoral Studies. In 2014, he started collaborating with the Chair of Business Journalism and New Media at the University of Economics in Katowice. In 2014/15, he was editor-in-chief of the monthly "Śląsk". In 2015, he was appointed director of the Centre for Innovation, Technology Transfer and Development at the UŚ Foundation. That year he also became chair of the Chapter of the EDUInspiracje-Media Competition organized by the Foundation for the Development of the Education System (Fundacja Rozwoju Systemu Edukacji). From 2015 he lectured at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, and from 2018 at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski in Bulgaria. He joined the National Geographic Society in 1988 and Polish-Icelandic Friendship Society (Towarzystwo Przyjaźni Polsko-Islandzkiej) the same year. In 1998, he joined the Association of Journalists of the Republic of Poland (Stowarzyszenia Dziennikarzy RP), becoming deputy chair of the Katowice branch in 2016. He joined the Society of Friends of UŚ in 1998 and the Polish Association of Social Communication (Polskie Towarzystwo Komunikacji Społecznej) in 2011. In 2013, he was a foundation member of Stowarzyszenie „Humanisto, podnieś głowę!” (Chin up, Humanities scholar! Association). He received the UŚ Rector's prize on several occasions (1990, 1993, 1996, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2009), the prize of the Minister of National Education and Sport in 2003 and 2005, and the Prize of the Minister of Science and Higher Education in 2006 and 2009. In 2012, he was made Ambassador of Polish Congresses, a title bestowed by the chapter of the Programme of Congress Ambassadors. That year he also received the Z. Gloger Prize and Medal. In 2015, he received the Award of the Mayor of Pszyczyna, while in 2016 he received the Prize of the Derzhavin Institute in St Petersburg. He was a visiting lecturer at the following universities: Università Degli Studi Di Bari Aldo Moro in Bari; Università Degli Studi Di Napoli L’Orientale in Naples, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, and the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. He received the gold award "For distinguished service to the University of Silesia" in 2005, the Medal of the Commission of National Education in 2007, the Silver Cross of Merit in 2012 and the decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture in 2015. He lives in Katowice.