Meet our host

Łukasz Wordliczek is Associate Professor at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, Jagiellonian University. He holds a PhD in political science (2002, Jagiellonian University), and habilitation in political science (2013, Jagiellonian University). His teaching covers topics related to social/political consequences of technology, US political system and US foreign policy. Dr. Wordliczek is the author, editor, or co-editor of nine books, as well as the author of a number of articles and conference papers on relations between technology and politics, non-state actors, public policy, and political science methodology. Currently he is coordinating setting up the Polish branch of the Comparative Agendas Project and investigating AI-democracy nexus. Dr. Wordliczek is a supervisor and reviewer of over 200 bachelor’s and master’s theses and a two-time winner of the individual award of the Rector of the Jagiellonian University.

Adrian Brona is a Research and Teaching Assistant at the Department of China of the Institute of the Middle and Far East at Jagiellonian University. He specializes in studying China's domestic politics, foreign policy, and Polish-Chinese relations. Throughout his career, he has conducted research projects on various topics, including the workings of the Chinese Communist Youth League, Chinese political leadership, and subnational party elites. Non-resident research fellow of the Center for Asian Affairs at the University of Lodz.

Agata Mazurkiewicz holds a PhD in Political Science (Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland) and is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Political Science and International Relations at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her research interests include civil-military cooperation and interactions, resilience and NATO affairs. She was a principal investigator and researcher in several national and international research projects devoted to NATO, resilience, as well as civilian input into deterrence and defence. Her recent publications include a research monograph entitled Civil-Military Cooperation in International Interventions: The Role of Soldiers (Routledge, 2022) and a co-edited volume on Emerging Varieties of Resilience: Experiences from Germany, Poland and Ukraine (Routledge, 2025).

Maciej Pletnia holds a PhD in Humanities, a Master's degree in Cultural Studies, and a Master's degree in Sociology, and is a scholarship holder of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. From 2012 to 2014, he studied at the University of Tokyo. In 2009, he studied at Tokyo Gakugei University. A graduate of the interdisciplinary doctoral program "Society - Technologies - Environment." He participated in the Critical Discourse Analysis summer school at the University of Essex in 2015. His main research interests are collective memory in post-war Japan, Japanese foreign policy, and Japanese society. Other interests include the application of game theory to the analysis of political decisions, as well as the use of critical discourse analysis for media message analysis.

Tomasz Pugacewicz is Assistant Professor at the Chair in International Relations and Foreign Policy of the Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His research interests include Foreign Policy Analysis, U.S. and Polish foreign policy decision making, American–Polish relations and transatlantic cooperation, security in the Post-Soviet Region, and history of International Relations (academic discipline) in Poland and in U.S. During his internships abroad, he was a visiting researcher at the Johns Hopkins University and participated in a bilateral exchange programme at the Heidelberg University and the State University of New York (SUNY). He also conducted research at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, and University of Oxford.