He is a historian and Arabist, and Professor at the Faculty of Law, Administration and International Relations of the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University. In 1994–2011, he was the Director of the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw
He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Rutgers and Princeton Universities (1994/1995) and received ”haut niveau” fellowship of the French Government at La Maison Mediterranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme in Aix-en-Provence. He also was a recipient of the Kuwaiti and Jordanian Governments fellowships.
He completed archival research at The Houghton Library (Harvard University), The Presbyterian Historical Society (Philadelphia, PA), The Hope College (Holland, Michigan), the Theological Seminary (New Brunswick, NJ), state archives in Rabat, Amman, Tehran, Moscow, Muscat and on regular basis at the National Archives and the India Office Records (London), the Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Paris–La Courneuve and Nantes), and Service historique de la Défense in Paris–Vincennes.
He completed several projects, particularly on the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (including the translation the works of Hassan al-Banna); slavery in the Persian Gulf (based on the British documents); the activities of the American missionaries in the Persian Gulf (the American archives); the participation of the Muslim soldiers in the French army during the Great War (the French archives). Currently, he is involved in a project on the Ibadi law, particularly the works of the Omani theologian and historian Imam Nur al-Din al-Salimi (d. 1914).
Selected publications
Books
Can Muslims be French citizens? The North African Muslim Soldiers in the French Army during the Great War (1914–1918) (2021)
„Saving Sinners, even Moslems”. The Arabian Mission (1889–1973) and Its Intellectual Roots (2018)
Middle Eastern Societies in the 20th Century (2014)
Speaking With Their Own Voices: The Stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century (2014)
Slavery and Manumission: British Policy in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in the First Half of the 20th Century (2013).
Articles
“Limited trust and its roots. The attitude of French military and political officials toward the North African soldiers during the Great War (1914–1918)”, Middle Eastern Studies (forthcoming)
“In Search of the Supracultural: American Missionaries in the Gulf in 1920s-1930s”, Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations, 2019
“Rev. John G. Lansing (1851–1906) on Preaching the Gospel to Muslims”, The Muslim World, 2019
Nur al-Din al-Salimi (1286-1332/1869-1914 and Islamic Reform in the Modern Indentity Context, [w:] Local and Global Ibadi Identities, Olms, Weidemann, Hildesheim, 2019
“Protestant Millennialism and Missions at the Turn of the 20th Century”, Hemispheres. Studies on Cultures and Societies, 2018
“Contesting Enslavement: Voices of the Female Slaves from the Persian Gulf in the 1930s”, Die Welt des Islams, 2015
“The Right to Manumit and British Relations with Ibn Saud and Persia in the 1920s,” Journal of Contemporary History, 2015