DĄBRÓWKA Andrzej

Born on 11 September 1949 in the village of Gruszczyn (Mazovian voivodeship); son of the farmers Aleksander Dąbrówka and Stanisława, née Nyrek. He initially attended the P. Wysocki Grammar School in Warka before moving to Podkowa Leśna with his family in 1966. He subsequently attended the T. Zan Grammar School in Pruszków, where he completed his advanced secondary education in 1967. He then studied astronomy, before starting a degree in German philology at the University of Warsaw (UW) in 1971. During this period he started publishing poetry in youth, student and regional periodicals. His first cycle of poems appeared in the monthly "Radar" (no. 1, 1970), while he also published humouresque pieces and translations of Russian prose (starting with A. Kurlandzki and A. Chajt's Słoń [Elephant] in the weekly „Itd”, no. 2, 1970 ) or Germany poetry. He considers a cycle of poems published in 1976 in "Twórczość" (no. 3) to be his proper literary debut. That year he also graduated with a master's degree and began working as an assistant lecturer at the University of Warsaw's Institute of German Studies. His research initially focused on linguistics and Dutch literature. He also began translating poetry and prose from Dutch and Afrikaans (between 1979 and 1982 he used the pen name Andrzej Braga). His first translation appeared in 1976 in the monthly "Literatura na Świecie" (no. 3). He was awarded a doctoral degree from UW in 1987 for his dissertation on fourteenth-century Flemish drama titled Untersuchungen über die mittelniederländischen Abele Spelen. (Herkunft — Stil — Motive) (Studies into the Middle Dutch "Abele Spelen": Origins, Style and Motifs). He was supervised by Prof. Jan A. Czochralski. In subsequent years, his research interests expanded to encompass the lexicography of the Polish language and literary historiography. He contributed entries on people and subjects to Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN, Poland's authoritative encyclopaedia. In 2001, he was appointed to the Department of Medieval Literature (Pracownia Literatury Średniowiecznej) at the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN). The same year, he was awarded a habilitation degree on the basis of his book Teatr i sacrum w średniowieczu. Religia, cywilizacja, estetyka (Theatre and the Sacred in the Middle Ages. Religion, civilization and aesthetics), while in 2002 he was made senior lecturer at IBL PAN. He was also appointed to the Institute's Scientific Council. He continued researching on the theory and history of older literature, particularly Medieval drama and theatre, before also turning to Polish poetry and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has spent time as a research fellow and visiting lecturer in Austria, Belgium, Lithuania, France, the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, the USA, Hungary and Italy. He became a member of academic associations relevant to research on the Middle Ages, including: Medieval Academy of America (in 2000), Société Internationale pour l’Étude du Théâtre Médiéval (SITM; in 2006), and Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (SIEPM; in 2007). He was awarded the Polish Prime Minister's Prize in 2002 for his scholarly work, while in 2006 he received the Prize of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. Since 2005, he has lectured on the postgraduate and doctoral programmes at IBL PAN. In 2007, he became head of the Department of Medieval Literature at IBL PAN. In this role, he continued to organize "Spotkania Mediewistyczne" (Medieval Encounters), a series of conferences initiated by Prof. Teresa Michałowska. He joined the editorial boards of the IBL PAN publication series Studia Staropolskie. Series Nova and Bibliotheca Litterarum Medii Aevi. Between 2009 and 2012, he wrote a blog on the portal Salon24, and then on Wordpress from 2012 (https://adabrowka.wordpress.com), featuring some of his scholarly research, literary tales, photo reportage and photo-based poetry. In 2010, he was appointed associate professor before being made state-appointed professor in 2013. The following year, he was appointed to the position of full professor at IBL PAN. In 2012, he became head of the team preparing Jan Kochanowski's complete works ( Dzieła wszystkie) for publication, receiving a grant in 2013 and 2018 from the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities (Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki) to complete the work that had begun in 1982.

He married Jadwiga Piwońska in 1971 and they have two sons together, Łukasz and Jerzy. He lives in Podkowa Leśna.