On 22 May 2018 at the College of Europe in Natolin the Bronisław Geremek Prize was awarded for the third time.
 The main prize, for an outstanding book in the field of the history of European civilization was awarded to Dr Krzysztof BORODA (University of Białystok) for Geografia gospodarcza Królestwa Polskiego w XVI wieku [The economic geography of the Kingdom of Poland in the sixteenth century], Bialystok: Instytut Badań nad Dziedzictwem Kulturowym Europy, 2016. This 880-page book explains the contours of the economic development that underpinned Poland’s sixteenth-century "golden age" and highlights changes in the agrarian sector during the 1560s and 1570s which would cast a shadow over the decades that followed. The implications are applicable to other early modern economies east of the river Elbe. |
A prize was also awarded for an outstanding first academic book in the same field.  The young historian so distinguished is Dr Agata ZYSIAK (Universities of Warsaw and Łódź) for Punkty za pochodzenie. Powojenna modernizacja i uniwersytet w robotniczym mieście [Points for origin. Postwar modernization and a university in a workers’ city], Kraków: NOMOS, 2016. Focusing on the university established soon after the second-world war in the industrial city of Łódź, Dr ZYSIAK explores the attempts to create a new type of socialist university, open to the working classes, and the encounter of this project with traditional academic corporations. The case of the University of Łódź is considered within a much wider framework of postwar modernization, applicable on both sides of the "Iron Curtain". |
Both prizes were presented by Marcin GEREMEK, the son of Professor Bronisław GEREMEK and the Vice-Chairman of the prize chapter. The chapter is constituted by historians nominated by the Chair of European Civilization at the College of Europe, founded in 2010 by the European Parliament in memory of Bronisław GEREMEK, and by the Professor Bronisław Geremek Foundation. The chapter is chaired by Professor Richard BUTTERWICK-PAWLIKOWSKI, the current Chairholder. It reaches its decisions on the basis of reviews written by a jury of international experts of books submitted by leading academic publishers.
