GROMELSKI, Tomasz Witold

Max Weber Fellow, 2009-2010

Post-doctoral Fellow
Faculty of History
Wolfson College
University of Oxford
Oxford
United Kingdom

Email tomasz.gromelski@gmail.com  
 

 

 

 

 

My primary research interests lie in the European nobility and gentry, and in European political, legal and constitutional thought and culture in the period from the later Middle Ages to the beginning of the seventeenth century.

My MA thesis completed at Warsaw University discussed the social structure and social topography of noble-owned towns in Poland-Lithuania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whereas my Oxford doctoral dissertation and recent publications concentrated on major themes in sixteenth-century Polish and English social and political thought and political culture, as well as on social relations and aspects of the mentality of the provincial elites.

In my research I have employed the comparative approach, which I find to be a practical and efficient tool for testing the validity of conventional views and new hypotheses.

My current project focuses on the concept of public service in sixteenth-century England, France, Italy and Poland-Lithuania. I believe that the notion of voluntary service for the community, the people and the monarch and the accompanying doctrine, can be seen as an epitome or pinnacle of the Renaissance ruling classes’ social and political ideology and as a pivotal element of their world-view.

The ideal of vita activa worked as an important factor in encouraging the elites to become involved in government, administration, execution of justice and political life, without which communal and national integration as well as management and mobilization of the country’s resources would have been impossible.

Full CV and Publications