General Director of State Archives

General Director of State Archives - Władysław Stępniak

Władysław Stępniak PhD was appointed to the position of General Director of State Archives on 10th of August  2011.

Władysław Stępniak, PhD – associate professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, member of the International Advisory Committee of the Memory of the World Programme and of the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Issues.
Between 1973 and 1976, Władysław Stępniak was a PhD student at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, following which he started his career at the Head Office of the State Archives. For a period of 7 years, he was a junior lecturer and later a reader at the Department of Archive Studies. Between 1983 and 1997, he worked at the Central Archives of Historical Records, first as the Deputy Director, and later as the Director of this institution.

Since 1997, Professor Stępniak has been working again at the Head Office of State Archives: until 2007 as the Chief Deputy Director of the State Archives, and currently as the Director's Advisor.

During his academic career, Professor Władysław Stępniak participated in research projects carried out by universities outside of Poland – first in Belgrade, as part of the scholarship granted to him by the Department of Political Science of the University of Belgrade. Later he was a visiting professor at London University (1985) and Stanford University (1994-1995). Professor Stępniak is actively involved in cooperation with academic institutions: he lectures at the Department of East European Studies of Warsaw University, Świętokrzyska Academy in Kielce and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.

He is the author of approximately 220 academic publications, including four monographs. His main area of research involves the legal aspects of international protection of cultural goods, the history of Polish archival records dispersed throughout the world and their revindication, as well as issues relating to the availability of archival records. His main areas of academic interest include also the position of small and medium countries particularly the Balkans, in the history of international relations in the 20th century.

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