LEOCIAK Jacek

Born on 2 June 1957 in Warsaw; son of the civil servants Wacław Leociak and Wanda, née Herbert. He attended the Romuald Traugutt Grammar School (No. XLV) in Warsaw. He then studied Polish philology at the University of Warsaw (UW) from 1976 to 1981. After graduating, he worked as an assistant at the Department of Methodology of Literary Studies and Textual Theory at UW before taking up a post at a centre at the university working on a Dictionary of the Language of Cyprian Norwid (Pracownia Słownika Języka Cypriana Norwida), where he remained until 1997. His research initially focused on the works of the poet Cyprian Norwid. He later concentrated on analyses of various ways of recording and representing limit experiences, particularly the Holocaust, as well as on the history of the Warsaw Ghetto. His first article, an excerpt of his master's thesis, was Angażowanie nieporozumień jako strategia komunikacyjna. (Na przykładzie „Kotłów Beethovenowskich” Choromańskiego) (Employing Misunderstandings as a Communicative Strategy: Choromański's "Kotły Beethenowskie" [Beethoven's Kettledrums]). It appeared in the journal "Pamiętnik Literacki" in 1982 (vol. 3/4). From 1985 to 2013, he regularly published reviews in "Nowe Książki", then later in the daily "Gazeta Wyborcza" (1991, 1993, 1994, 2001, and 2011–12) and in the Catholic weekly "Tygodnik Powszechny" (1991, 1993, 1995, 2011, 2013, and 2015–16). His scholarly articles, essays and book reviews also appeared in "Res Publica Nowa" (1992, 1999–2001), "Pamiętnik Literacki" (1995), "Teksty Drugie" (1996 and 1999), "Midrasz" (1997–99) and "Rzeczpospolita" (1998 and 2000–01). In 1993, he became editor-in-chief of the new journal "Polska-Izrael". In 1996, he defended his doctoral thesis Tekst wobec zagłady. (O relacjach z getta warszawskiego) (a version was published in English in 2004 as "Text in the Face of Destruction: Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto reconsidered"). He was supervised by Prof. Michał Głowiński. In 1996, he established a tutorial, which later became a master's seminar, on experiences of the Holocaust. In 1997, he took up a post at the Department of Theoretical Poetics and Literary Language (from 2008 the Department of Theoretical Poetics and since 2016 the Department of Theoretical Poetics and Literary Language) at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN). Between 1998 and 2006, he was director of postgraduate studies at IBL PAN, also running the seminar Doświadczenie Zagłady (Experiences of the Shoah) and the tutorials Poetyka makabry (Macabre Poetics) and Fotografia jako tekst kultury (Photography as Cultural Text). He became a member of the Polish Writers' Association (SPP) in 1998. He was appointed to the Scientific Council of IBL PAN in 1999, serving as its deputy chairman from 2011 to 2014. In 2003, he co-founded the Polish Center for Holocaust Research (Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów) at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN). In 2005, he joined the editorial board of the Center's yearbook "Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały". Two years later, he became president of the newly formed Association of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research. In 2004, he was appointed director of the Holocaust Literature Research Group at IBL PAN. He has held numerous fellowships and research grants for trips abroad, including visits to the Yad Vashem Institute and to universities in Haifa (where he gave a series of lectures on Holocaust literature and the Warsaw Ghetto in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009), Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Be'er Sheva, all in Israel; in the United Kingdom he conducted research at the British Academy, British Library and Imperial War Museum Archives; and in the United States he held a two-month fellowship at the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education in Los Angeles. In 2006, he joined the international team of experts developing the exhibition of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Together with Prof. Barbara Engelking he co-created the Holocaust Gallery section of the permanent exhibition, covering the years 1939 to 1945. In 2015, he was appointed to the Collegium of Historians at the Museum. He became a member of the Polish PEN Club in 2007. In 2008, he joined the Programme Council of the History Meeting House (Dom Spotkań z Historią) in Warsaw. He was awarded a habilitation degree from IBL PAN in 2011 for his study Doświadczenia graniczne. Studia o dwudziestowiecznych formach reprezentacji (published in English in 2019 as Limit Experiences: A study of twentieth-century forms of representation). The same year was promoted to the position of associate professor at IBL PAN before being made state-appointed professor in the humanities two years later. He served one term, between 2012 and 2016, on the Scientific Council of the Institute of Polish Culture at UW, while from 2015 to 2019 he was a member of Polish Academy of Sciences' Committee on Literary Studies (KNoL). In 2018, on the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he was presented with the City of Warsaw Literary Prize. In 2019, he received the Kazimierz Wyka Prize for outstanding achievements in essay writing and literary and artistic criticism. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2008, the 2011 Medal for Tolerance ("Zasłużony dla Tolerancji") awarded by the Ecumenical Foundation for Tolerance (Ekumeniczna Fundacja Tolerancja), and the Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture in 2015. He married the teacher and headteacher Marzanna Rymsza in 1984; they have two children, Magdalena (b. 1987) and Szymon (b. 1993). He lives in Konstancin.