Richard Butterwick (from 2012 Butterwick-Pawlikowski) studied History at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with first-class honours in 1989. Following a year at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, he moved to the University of Oxford to study for his doctorate, which he was awarded in 1994. He then held a postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford, before becoming Lecturer in Modern European History at the Queen’s University of Belfast in 1997. In 2005 he moved to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, where in 2013 he became Professor of Polish-Lithuanian History. He took unpaid leave from UCL in 2014-17, and worked part-time for UCL in 2017-20, enabling him to hold the European Civilization Chair at Natolin in 2014-2020. He has now returned full-time to his Chair at UCL.
Professor Butterwick-Pawlikowski’s research focuses on the Enlightenment and its critics, and on one of the most remarkable polities in European history – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795). In 2016 he was awarded the bronze medal Gloria Artis for his services to Polish culture and gained the degree of habilitated doctor from the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the author of over eighty scholarly publications – monographs, edited volumes, and articles and chapters in refereed journals and collections. These include:
-
The Constitution of 3 May 1791: Testament of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Warsaw: Polish History Museum, 2021; downloadable here: https://polishhistory.pl/the-constitution-of-3-may-1791/; Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and German translations), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRYVkWX6FuM;
-
Poland's Last King and English Culture: Stanisław August Poniatowski, 1732-1798 (Oxford: OUP, 1998; revised Polish edition: Warsaw: IBL, 2000);
- (ed.), The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in European Context, c. 1500-1795 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001; Polish translation: Warsaw: Bellona, 2020);
- (ed., with Simon Davies and Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa), Peripheries of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, SVEC 2008:1);
- The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788-1792: A Political History (Oxford: OUP, 2012; longer Polish edition: Polska Rewolucja a Kościół katolicki 1788-1792, Kraków: Arcana and Muzeum Historii Polski, 2012, second edition 2019);
- (ed., with Quincy Cloet and Alex Dowdall), Breaking Empires, Making Nations? The First World War and the Reforging of Europe (Warsaw: College of Europe Natolin and Natolin European Centre, 2017);
- (ed., with Wioletta Pawlikowska), Social and Cultural Relations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Microhistories (New York: Routledge, 2019);
- The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733-1795: Light and Flame, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020)