Aesthetics of Populism: Political Struggle and the Aesthetics Experience in Poland after 1989

Leszek Koczanowicz is Professor of Cultural Studies and Political Science at the Department of Cultural Studies at the SWPS University (Poland). He specializes in theory of culture, social theory, and cultural aspects of politics. His previous appointments include inter alia the University of Wroclaw, SUNY/Buffalo, Columbia University, and SUNY/Geneseo Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He is the author and editor of twelve books and numerous articles in Polish and English, including Politics of Time: Dynamics of Identity in Post-Communist Poland (Berghahn Books, 2008), Politics of Dialogue: Non-Consensual Democracy and Critical Community (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Anxiety and Lucidity: Reflections on Culture in Times of Unrest (Routledge, 2020), and recently Emancipatory Power of the Body in Everyday Life: Niches of Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).Michał Stambulski is Assistant Professor in Legal Theory at the Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands), and a visiting professor at West University in Timisoara (Romania) and Oñati International Institute of Sociology of Law (Spain). He was a 2023 Emile Noël Global Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, New York University. His recent publications address the issues of rule of law, constitutional populism, legal mobilization, and strategic litigation in Europe.Wojciech Ufel is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Wrocław (Poland) and a researcher in the Horizon2020 project EUARENAS at the University of Wrocław. He specializes in political theory, particularly contemporary debates on participatory, deliberative and radical democracy as well as populism. In his research he applies political philosophy based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to 'language games', together with postcolonial, posthumanist and critical theories, also to empirical research and social practice. He was a visiting researcher at The New School for Social Research, University of Brighton (UK), and Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). He collaborates with municipalities and civil society organizations in Poland and beyond in the organization and evaluation of participatory practices.Rafał Włodarczyk is Associate Professor at the Institute of Pedagogy at the University of Wrocław (Poland). He specializes in educational theory, general pedagogy and the philosophy of education. His research interests also concern social theory and philosophy, ethics, cultural anthropology, and the borderland of Western and Jewish thought. He holds a Ph.D. and Habilitation in Social Sciences. He has published four monographs, including (in English) Utopia and Education: Studies in Philosophy, Theory of Education, and Pedagogy of Asylum (Wrocław, 2022, open access). He is the author of several articles and co-editor of works in Polish and English.