URSEL Marian

Born on 15 December 1950 in Świdnica; son of Władysław Ursel and Zofia, née Hybsz. He attended Grammar School No. II in Świdnica from 1964 to 1968. He then studied Polish philology at the University of Wroclaw (UWr) from 1968 to 1973. In his fifth year at university, he took up a post at the Institute of Polish Philology (IFP) at UWr. After completing his master's degree in 1973, he worked as an assistant at the Department of the History of Nineteenth-Century Polish Literature at IFP at UWr. The following year, he was made senior assistant. In his research, he focused on nineteenth-century literature and folklore, in particular the works of Aleksander Fredro. He also worked on the relations between literature and the visual arts. He published his first article, Bohater romantycznej powieści poetyckiej (The Heroes of Romantic Poetic Novels), in 1973 in "Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis" (no. 15). He joined the Wroclaw branch of the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society in 1975, remaining a member until the dissolution of the branch in 2005. He made his debut as an editor in 1976, with an edition of Adam Mickiewicz's Grażyna (published by the Ossolineum). He was awarded a doctoral degree in 1978 for his dissertation Bajkopisarstwo Aleksandra Fredry (Aleksander Fredro's Fairy Tales), which was supervised by Prof. Bogdan Zakrzewski. He was subsequently appointed lecturer. From 1981 to 1983, he continued his education at the Polonicum Centre of Polish Language and Culture for Foreigners at the University of Warsaw (UW). In subsequent years, he was editor of critical editions of many classics of Romantic literature. During this period, he published studies and essays in edited volumes as well as periodicals including "Literatura Ludowa" (1982) and "Pamiętnik Literacki" (1983, 1991–93, 1995, and 1998; also reviews here), and in the biannual "Ze Skarbca Kultury" (1986). He worked as a tutor in Polish language and lecturer in Polish literature at the University of Münster in Germany from 1985 to 1987. He was awarded a habilitation degree from UWr in 1993 for his monograph O wierszach Aleksandra Fredry (On Aleksander Fredro's Poems).
He was appointed professor at UWr in 1998. From 2000 to 2014, he was editor-in-chief of the literary studies series "Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis. Prace Literackie", where he also published his articles and studies. In 2000, he took up a post as professor at the Faculty of Humanities (later the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences) at the Karkonosze College in Jelenia Góra, which is 2010 became the Karkonosze State University of Applied Sciences (KPSW). He was a member of the Wroclaw Scientific Society from 2002 to 2015, serving as deputy chair of its Section I from 2007. He was made state-appointed professor in 2004, the same year that he was made deputy director of the Doctoral Programme at the Faculty of Philology at UWr. During this period, his research interests focused on Romantic anthropothanatology and the cultures and customs in nineteenth-century Polish and international health resorts. He joined the Karkonosze Scientific Society in 2005. Following the division of the Department of the History of Nineteenth-Century Polish Literature in 2008, he was appointed head of the Department of Romantic Literature at IFP at UWr. That year, he founded the periodical "Zeszyty Wydziału Humanistycznego" at the Faculty of Humanities at the Karkonosze College in Jelenia Góra, co-editing issue 2 in 2008 and issue 5 in 2010. In 2011, he became chair of the Society of Friends of Polish Philology at the University of Wroclaw. From 2011 to 2014, he was leader of the research project Na pograniczu kultur. Literackie i paraliterackie recepcje obyczaju, tradycji, kultury umysłowej na Dolnym Śląsku i Opolszczyźnie (In Cultural Contact Zones: Literary and paraliterary reception of customs, traditions and intellectual culture in Lower Silesia and the Opole Region). Between 2012 and 2016, he was leader of the third-party funded project Twórczość Aleksandra Fredry w opiniach jego współczesnych (Aleksander Fredro's Contemporaries' Opinion of his Writings). He was appointed rector of KPSW in 2015. He has four children, two sons – Andrzej (b. 1979) and Łukasz (b. 1984) – and two daughters – Maria (b. 1994) and Hanna (b. 1997). He lives in Wroclaw.