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Prof. Jerzy Zdanowski, PhD

Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University

Editor-in-Chief

jzdanowski@uafm.edu.pl

Professor Jerzy Zdanowski holds a PhD in Political Science, a habilitation degree, and the title of Professor of Historical Sciences. He specialises in Middle Eastern studies.
He is a professor at the Faculty of Law of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University (UAFM). He served for three terms as Chair of the Scientific Council for the discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has supervised and reviewed doctoral and habilitation dissertations as well as professorial title proceedings. He also serves as a reviewer for research projects funded by the European Science Foundation.
From 1978 to 2016, he was affiliated with the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). He lectured at the Jagiellonian University, the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH), and the University of Warsaw. Between 1994 and 2016, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the English-language annual Hemispheres. Studies on Cultures and Societies, published by the Institute.
He has conducted political science and historical research on the Middle East since 1974. His research interests include international relations, political systems analysed through political theory and international relations theory, modern and contemporary history of the Middle East, Islamism, Islamic law, intercultural relations, and development issues. As part of his Arabic studies training, he studied at universities in Kuwait, Jordan, and Egypt.
He completed numerous international research fellowships, including those funded by the British Academy (School of Oriental and African Studies, London), the Fulbright Foundation (Princeton University and Rutgers University), and the Government of France (haut niveau fellowship, La Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, Aix-en-Provence).
He conducted archival research at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia; Hope College in Holland, Michigan; the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, NY; the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey; the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow; state archives in Rabat, Cairo, Amman, Tehran, and Muscat; as well as repeatedly at The National Archives and the India Office in London, the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques in Nantes and La Courneuve, and the Service Historique de la Défense in Vincennes.
He conducted field research in Oman and in China, among Chinese Muslim communities in Xinjiang, Hunan, and Xi’an provinces.
He participated in numerous international research projects, including Individual and Society in the Mediterranean Muslim World, sponsored by the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg (1996–2001). From 1998 to 2001, he coordinated the Polish–Finnish research project State and Everyday Life in Africa, sponsored by UNESCO. From 2009 to 2013, he coordinated the project African Borderlands, financed by the European Science Foundation. He was also a member of the research team at the National Library of Poland, responsible for preparing the manuscript of Wacław Rzewuski.
He has been continuously elected to the Committee of Oriental Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences since 2000.
In 2003, he received the Scientific Award of Division I of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Social Sciences) in Oriental Studies for his book History of Eastern Arabia from Antiquity to the End of the Thirteenth Century.

He has received the following grants from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Centre:
Islam and Globalization (2003–2005, jointly with Prof. Anna Mrozek-Dumanowska)
Slavery in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century (2006–2008)
Muslim Socio-Political Thought: The Muslim Brotherhood Movement (2006–2008)
Middle Eastern Societies in the 20th Century (2009–2012)
International Relations in the Middle East in the 20th Century (2010–2012)
The State in the Muslim Middle East: Processes of Genesis and Factors of Durability (2011–2014)
The Arabian Mission and Its Activities in the Persian Gulf, 1889–1972: Intercultural Communication, Religious Conversion and Regional History (2014–2016)
Muslim Soldiers in the French Army during World War I and the Policy of Multiculturalism (2018–2020)

He has delivered dozens of invited lectures abroad, including at Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Haifa, the Institute of International Relations in Casablanca, Sheikh Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, Trinity College Dublin, the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer Sheva), St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the Institute of Diplomatic Studies in Riyadh, the University of Liverpool, and Collegium Maius of the Jagiellonian University.

Monographs:

Professor Zdanowski is the author of over 120 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as 22 books.

Monographs Accepted for Publication:

  • Writing the Past: Ibāḍī Moral Historiography in Nūr al-Dīn al-Sālimī’s Tuḥfat al-Aʿyān bi-Sīrat Ahl ʿUmān.
  • Bliski Wschód na globalnej szachownicy [The Middle East on the Global Chessboard] (with Michał Lipa, PhD).

Articles and Book Chapters (since 2018):

  • Variables and Dynamics of the Middle Eastern System, Stosunki Międzynarodowe – International Relations, DOI: 10.12688/stomiedintrelat.17888.1, November 2024.
  • The Social Construction of Slavery, Injustice and Manumission on the Gulf Coast of Arabia and Oman in the 1920s and 1930s, in: Slavery in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. by Elena Andreeva and Kevin McNeer, I.B. Tauris, Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2024, pp. 73–94.
  • Citizenship, Culture, and Politics: The Debate on the Naturalization of Muslim Soldiers in the French Army during the Great War (1914–1918), INSTED: Interdisciplinary Studies in Education & Society; Teraźniejszość – Człowiek – Edukacja, Vol. 24, No. 2(92), 2022, pp. 103–111, https://doi.org/10.34862/tce/2022/11/30/ak1t-at63.
  • A Failed Acculturation-by-Naturalisation Experiment: The Néo-Français in Tunisia under the French Protectorate, Hemispheres, No. 37, 2022, pp. 5–23, e-ISSN 2449-8645.
  • Equality in Inequality: Social Benefits for North African Muslim Soldiers in the French Army during the Great War (1914–1918), The Journal of North African Studies, 30 October 2022, pp. 75–99, https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2022.2140142.
  • Limited Trust and Its Roots: The Attitudes of French Military and Political Officials toward North African Soldiers during the Great War (1914–1918), Middle Eastern Studies, 17 October 2022, pp. 741–751, https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2022.2131547.
  • “We Are Not Them!” Self-Presentation of North African Muslim Soldiers in German Captivity, 1914–1918, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19 September 2022, https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2022.2126348.
  • Maqāṣid and Qawāʿid: Objectives and Canons in Islamic Law, in: O You, from Whatever Land You Come, Read the Song That Is Told… Festschrift in Honour of Professor Jolanta Sierakowska-Dyndo, edited by Sylwia Surdykowska-Konieczny, University of Warsaw Press, Warsaw 2022, pp. 392–402.
  • Using Government Documents: Diplomatic Service Correspondence of Twentieth-Century History (2021), chapter in Research Methods: Primary Sources, Marlborough: Adam Matthew, DOI: 10.47594/RMPS_0091.
  • Using Primary Source Documents for Researching Law and Legal Systems (2021), chapter in Research Methods: Primary Sources, Marlborough: Adam Matthew Digital, DOI: 10.47594/RMPS_0181.
  • In Search of the Supracultural: American Missionaries in the Gulf in the 1920s–1930s, Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations, Vol. 30, Issue 3, 2019, pp. 383–399, https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2019.1653657.
  • Rev. John G. Lansing (1851–1906) on Preaching the Gospel to Muslims, The Muslim World, Vol. 109, July 2019, pp. 450–465, https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12298.
  • Nūr al-Dīn al-Sālimī (1286–1332/1869–1914) and Islamic Reform in the Context of Modern Identity, in: Local and Global Ibadi Identities, edited by Y. Kondo and A. Ziaka, Olms–Weidmann, Hildesheim 2019, pp. 167–176, ISBN 978-3-487-15567-8.
  • Contesting Patriarchy in the Middle East: Social Processes and Values, in: Società, Valori, Conoscenza. Studies in Honour of Grzegorz J. Kaczyński, edited by A.-M. Leonora, Bonanno Editore, Rome 2019, pp. 251–268.
Academic profiles:
• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6878-0432
• Publications: https://ludzie.nauka.gov.pl/ln/profiles/gzQAferMTZP/publications
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.pl/scholar?q=jerzy+zdanowski+scholar+google&hl=pl&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart