Centrum Badań nad Kulturą i Mentalnością Dawnej Polski
About Us
Center for the Study of Culture and Mentalities in Early Modern Poland
A research unit at the Institute of History and Archival Studies, University of the National Education Commission, Krakow – studying the cultural history and mentalities of early modern Poland.
Together with partners across Poland and abroad, we explore the lives, beliefs, and worlds of people who inhabited the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Our work builds on a long-standing research agenda developed at the Department of Early Modern History – in historical anthropology, cultural history, the history of mentalities, and the history of the early modern family.
What unites us is a fascination with the textures of everyday life in earlier centuries – how families lived, how households were organized, how courts shaped the political and cultural imagination, and how material objects reflected the values and aspirations of those who used them. We are interested both in the broad social structures of the Commonwealth and in the small details that made up the daily worlds of its inhabitants. Our community of researchers is presented in detail on our Scientific Council page.
Research Themes
Family and Mentalities
Family life from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century: marriage strategies, household organization, parenthood, inheritance, and the rituals and ceremonies that punctuated daily lives. We are especially interested in how mentalities – collective ways of feeling, believing, and making sense of the world – shaped how families organized themselves across the social spectrum.
Courts and Elites
Royal, magnate, and noble courts, and how they shaped political culture, ceremonial life, and the everyday experiences of those who lived within them. We pay attention to court ritual, patronage, and the networks of dependence and ambition that bound elites together.
Women in Early Modern Poland
A growing strand of our work focuses on the position, agency, and self-representation of women across all social strata – from queens and noblewomen to townswomen and members of religious communities. We examine female monasticism, women’s participation in cultural and political life, and the history of women’s travel.
Material Culture and Everyday Life
The objects, spaces, and practices through which early modern Poles constructed their social and cultural identities. From household interiors to dress and ceremonial objects, material culture is one of the richest entry points into the lived experience of past centuries.
What we do
- conducting interdisciplinary research on the history of culture and mentalities in early modern Poland – including the family broadly understood, everyday life, family traditions, personal models and ideals, and education;
- examining the dynamics of legal, cultural, economic, and social change in the position and role of different social groups;
- organizing biennial international academic conferences, research seminars, and educational workshops, and publishing the results of this work;
- organizing semiannual research seminars with scholars from Polish and international academic centers, as well as doctoral candidates and students, as part of the Cracow Early Modern Meetings;
- publishing in leading academic journals and preparing open-access editions of primary sources;
- pursuing external research grants and project funding;
- sharing our findings with students, teachers, scholars from other fields, and broader audiences in Poland and abroad.
An international community
We are part of a broad international network. Our long-standing partners include scholars and institutions in Aberdeen, Viterbo, Opava, Prešov, Prague, Lviv, Kyiv, and Vilnius, and our research has been supported by the National Science Centre and the International Visegrad Fund. The Center is interdisciplinary by nature and institute-wide in scope: it brings together researchers from across the Institute of History and Archival Studies and welcomes collaboration with scholars from other academic institutions. For news of our latest activities, see our News page.
We welcome inquiries from researchers, doctoral candidates, and students working on early modern Poland and related fields. Get in touch via our Contact page.
