Chair of the Committee: Prof. Piotr Wilczek
Secretaries: Michał Choptiany, MA; Jakub Koryl, MA (research and publishing); Dr. Dariusz M. Bryćko (international cooperation)
Office assistant: Joanna Majchrzyk, MA

The Committee on the Study of the Reformation in Poland and East-Central Europe was established on 8 October 2009 by the resolution of the Council of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies „Artes Liberales” of the University of Warsaw as a research unit of the Institute. The Committee will be a forum for Polish and foreign scholars interested in issues concerning the Reformation in Poland and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern period. The Committee will be comprised of younger scholars involved in the humanities and social sciences (philosophy, literary studies, cultural studies, theology, religious studies, history of ideas), who want to investigate key aspects of the Reformation such as the various movements of religious renewal: Hussitism, Lutheranism and Calvinism, and more radical movements such as Antitrinitarian and Anabaptist as well. Committee members will also study leading intellectuals of the Early Modern period interested in Church reform (two prominent possibilities would be Erasmus of Rotterdam and Andreas Fricius Modrevius, but of course there are many others). Topics to be considered by the Commitee members will include Humanism and the Counter-Reformation (now discussed more often as Catholic Reform or Catholic Reformation), especially in reference to the Protestant and the Radical Reformations.

While the Committee will be a society of Polish and foreign scholars devoted exclusively to Reformation research projects focusing on East-Central Europe, it will not replace other initiatives, projects, societies and organizations already conducting Reformation research.

First and foremost, the Committee will be a forum for the exchange of ideas, a place for joint projects, a grouping of scholars who would like to collaborate in applying for local and international research grants. The membership will be open to all scholars doing research on the Reformation, regardless of their academic rank and institutional affiliation.

The following research areas are especially important:

• Translations and critical editions of source texts essential for Reformation studies, especially basic works of the leaders of the European Reformation to this point not translated into Polish;
• Up to date critical editions of Early Modern Polish and East-Central European Reformation texts;
• Biblical hermeneutics of the 16th century;
• Humanism vs. Reformation, and the problem of the so-called „confessionalization“ of Humanism;
• Methodological issues in the Reformation research (new methods, new approaches);
• Theology of the Reformation in East-Central Europe
  Erasmianism;
• Irenicism and the problems of religious toleration;
• Lutheranism and Calvinism in various regions of East-Central Europe;
• Antitrinitarianism (Socinianism);
• The Czech Brethren and the work of Jan Amos Komensky;
• Prominent figures of the Polish and East-Central European Refornation and those sympathizing with the Reformation;
• Protestant art;
• Political thought of the Reformation;
• Dialogue between Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches;
• Reformation and universities;
• Protestant and Catholic propaganda during the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation;
• Reformation in Western and East-Central Europe: similarities and differences;
• Protestant education (schools and universities);
• Books and printing as the agents of change;
• Reformation polemics and debates..