I am a scholar, social activist, citizen journalist, and science communicator, and since 2010 also an independent local politician.
Until 2023, I worked as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University. As an independent candidate, I ran in elections both to the European Parliament and to the Polish Sejm. Four times I was elected by the residents of my hometown of Wadowice to the City Council. In 2014–2018 I also served as the mayor of the city, representing the local civic electoral committee I co-founded, Free Wadowice Initiative.
Residents of my municipality know me as someone who, even as mayor, personally cleans up recreational areas, does not own a car, uses public transport, and for many years has actively promoted rail transport while fighting for the natural environment and clean air. I do not support building more motorways; instead, I would like to build new parks, municipal housing estates, and cycling paths.
Education and research experience
I completed a Master’s degree in Law and a degree in Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. In 2007 I was awarded a PhD in legal sciences. In 2025 I applied for the award of the postdoctoral degree (habilitation) in the discipline of legal sciences. For many years I worked at the Chair of Legal Theory at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University, and later at the Unit/Department of the History of Political and Legal Doctrines. Twice I completed several-month research fellowships at the Georg-August University of Göttingen (Germany), and once at the University of Alicante in Spain. In 2009, the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan offered me a position as a visiting professor in its summer law school. In 2023, I completed a one-month research fellowship at the University of Bremen (Germany), and in 2023 and 2024 also at Lusófona University in Porto. I currently collaborate academically with The Francisco Suárez Center for Advanced Studies in Law (CEAD) in Lisbon. I am also the author of several research projects funded first by the Committee for Scientific Research and later by the National Science Centre.
My research interests are very broad. As a lawyer, in my scholarly work I address topics concerning democratic standards, civil rights, and constitutionalism. I have written about the crisis of democracy, the role of truth in politics, and drug policy. Recently, I have also been working on public policy theory, in particular the theory of so-called wicked problems, which include issues such as air pollution and climate protection. As a philosopher, I represent the analytic tradition, working among other things on philosophical logic, the methodology of science, ethics (including bioethics), and the philosophy of mind, including artificial intelligence (AI).
I have published scholarly texts important for the Polish public debate on topics such as the criminalisation of drug use, the legalisation of same-sex marriage, whistleblowers, and abortion and doctors’ conscience.
For my academic work I have received several awards. In 2008 I received a one-year scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science for outstanding young PhDs. In 2008 the Polityka Weekly Foundation awarded me a prize for the best researchers of the young generation (“Zostańcie z Nami”). That same year I also received an award from the Zygmunt Ziembiński Foundation for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of philosophy of law (it concerned legal applications of logic). This dissertation formed the basis of my first academic monograph, published in 2011. In 2025 my second book was published, this time the result of nearly 20 years of research and social and political engagement in the field of drug policy.
My book titled Medical Cannabis: Regulatory Issues is a current and comprehensive study of the regulation of medical and recreational cannabis use, as well as scientific research on these plants.
Another book of mine (co-authored with Mateusz Stępień), this time on air-pollution policy in Poland, is currently in press. It will be published in English by Springer Nature.
Science communication
Teaching and academic work have been my passion. At my home university and at many foreign universities I have delivered lectures, classes, and workshops for law students and doctoral candidates. Earlier, I taught philosophy of science to high-school students in Wadowice, and at the student radio station Radio RAK (2000–2002) I hosted my own programme devoted to culture and alternative science (often together with Tomasz Bacewicz). The culmination of my outreach activity was an invitation to take part in the 14th Science Festival in Warsaw (2010) and recognition from the organisers for two lectures I delivered there.
During the pandemic, together with Bartek Lisowski (Jagiellonian University), we prepared a series of video podcasts entitled We Don’t Know This, devoted to currently debated public-health issues (the effectiveness and safety of vaccinations, the origins of COVID-19, face masks). It was the only programme produced at the Jagiellonian University at that time that popularised scientific knowledge about the pandemic and was broadcast on social media.
I still communicate science through my social media, journalistic commentary, and my blog, which received the BLOG OF THE YEAR 2011 award in the “Politics and Society” category, granted by Poland’s largest internet portal, Onet. A year earlier I was also nominated for this award. A juror in the competition was the legendary journalist Janina Paradowska from Polityka Weekly.
The Commodore computer scene
As early as primary school I was a programmer and part of the C64 computer scene. Together with my colleagues from the IMPACT group, we created several scene productions and published our own disk magazine (discmag) devoted to the C64 demoscene in digital form.
Political activism and civic engagement
From 2009, together with a group of activists and experts (including psychiatrist Marek Balicki, neurobiologist Jerzy Vetulani, addiction therapist Grzegorz Wodowski, and social activist Jacek Charmast), I co-created the Polish Drug Policy Network, an expert organisation that contributed to the first change in Polish drug law in 10 years, in the spirit of the slogan “treat instead of punish.” Until 2010 I led the organisation’s legal advocacy work, social campaigns, and represented it during legislative work in the Sejm concerning reform of Polish drug law. These efforts resulted in the introduction into the Act on Counteracting Drug Addiction of Article 62a, which allows prosecutors to refrain from punishment for drug possession—and, later, also in the regulation of the medical use of cannabis.
Until recently, in protest against the hypocrisy surrounding this issue in my country, I was one of the few scholars — and the only politician — declaring a positive attitude towards the use of so-called drugs, their decriminalization, and even legalization. Despite this, I achieved electoral success and was elected mayor of conservative — so it would seem — Wadowice.
In 2011 I founded in my hometown the local association Free Wadowice Initiative, an example of a so-called urban movement that has operated successfully to this day.
From 2015 I helped build the Progressive Mayors’ Movement, an informal group of village heads, mayors, and presidents of Polish cities promoting so-called progressive local policies. The symbolic beginning of the movement and its broader recognition came when, together with Robert Biedroń (mayor of Słupsk) and Paweł Adamowicz (mayor of Gdańsk), we declared that we would accept refugees into our cities during the ongoing refugee crisis.
In 2019, together with local activists from across the country, I co-founded the association Energia Miast (Energy of Cities), whose aim was cooperation on implementing progressive local policies in the areas of energy transition, public transport, and civic participation. Many of our members won leading places in elections, and some also became heads of their local communities.
Local government service
In 2010, for the first time, I won a seat as a councillor on the Wadowice City Council in local elections. For the next four years I relentlessly exposed the local political establishment and its links to organised crime. In 2013 I organised a local recall referendum against the disgraced city authorities—the city council and the mayor. The referendum did not reach the required turnout threshold, although more than 90% of participating residents voted in line with my initiative. In 2014, running from my own electoral committee, Wolne Wadowice (Free Wadowice), I won another councilor mandate and at the same time was elected mayor of Wadowice in the second round. Apart from me, no councilor from my lists entered the City Council, but in subsequent years, in early by-elections, I brought two people into the Council. Despite this, I secured Council support for most initiatives, and halfway through the term I replaced the Council chair and created a stable majority. In 2018, in the mayoral election, I again received the highest support in the city, but in rural localities — which decided the overall result — the PiS candidate won. I nevertheless brought as many as 10 councilors into the 21-member City Council, and I myself won a councilor mandate for the third time.
In 2019, as an independent candidate, I ran for the Sejm from the Civic Coalition list. Again, I received the greatest support among all local candidates (including then the current Prime Minister, Beata Szydło), but of course it was not enough to enter parliament.
During my time in office, Wadowice rose to top positions in all rankings compared to neighboring municipalities, making up for the previous 20 years of backlog. Together with the team I created, I prepared and carried out key investments for residents, implemented by the end of the previous term (i.e. until 2023): sewerage for the remaining half of the municipality, water-supply infrastructure, the railway and bus stations, a network of cycling routes, and a municipal park. We secured approximately PLN 110 million in additional external and EU funds for the municipal budget, which meant a major civilisational leap for the town and municipality.
Fighting smog
This issue was already part of my electoral programme in 2010. One can therefore say that I was among the first politicians to speak openly about the need to fight air pollution. However, only as mayor of Wadowice did I have the chance to implement pioneering, nationwide anti-smog policies. As the first municipality in Małopolska, Wadowice declared its accession to the LIFE programme and the employment of so-called eco-advisers who help residents replace boilers. I introduced high subsidies for replacing highly polluting stoves, and all stove-replacement programmes implemented with external funding in Wadowice were the result of applications submitted during my term.
As the only mayor in Małopolska, already in 2016 I filed a request for the Małopolska Regional Assembly to introduce a complete ban on installing new coal-fired stoves within the municipality of Wadowice, and a ban on burning coal in existing stoves (according to the grace periods provided for in the anti-smog resolution for the whole of Małopolska, i.e. from 2023). As the first municipality in Małopolska, we conducted permanent area inspections, installed an extensive network of air-quality sensors across the municipality, and implemented a smog alert system modelled on Kraków; in the main square I also installed an air-quality measuring station of the Kraków Smog Alert. For four years I also ran a very extensive educational campaign covering parents of preschool and school-age children and residents of individual villages in the Municipality of Wadowice, informing them about the health effects of living in polluted air. I published many materials on this topic in social media and nationwide media, and my actions also reached international media.
Smog also became the main topic of the 2018 local election campaign, during which PiS politicians promised residents of my municipality full impunity for emitting pollution and downplayed smog itself. I won the election in the city, but the villages—where illegally operating coal-fired stoves still dominate today—strongly supported the PiS candidate. This ultimately decided my defeat in the second round by a relatively small number of votes.
Conviction and loss of my job
As a result of PiS taking power in the country in 2015 (including members of the local Wadowice establishment — with Beata Szydło and Ewa Filipiak at the forefront) and subordinating the prosecution service and judiciary to politicians of that party, a number of charges connected to my public activity were brought against me. Ultimately, in scandalous circumstances, one month before the election in which I was to run again for mayor of Wadowice, judges linked to PiS overturned a favorable ruling for me and — bypassing a level of review — convicted me for rebuilding a bridge crossing in one of the localities of my municipality. I described the case in detail in one of my blog posts. A fine in a seemingly minor case meant, however, that I could not run in the election and also, by operation of law, lost my university job. I have not regained my position at the university to this day.
My adopted dogs and shelter friends
In 2023 I began caring for older dogs with difficult pasts. Gucio, now over 12 years old, and Mika, now 6, came to me a year apart, and although they do not live with me permanently, they accompanied me through many difficult moments. In 2025 I began volunteering at shelters for homeless animals in Portugal (Madeira Region). I care for a dozen or so different dogs abandoned by their owners, with whom I spend most of my free time. I have become very close friends with some of them: Brownie, Preta, Maria des Neves, Martinho, Jorge, Pandora, Ford, and Mike.
What next?
Despite the destruction of my political and academic career by a mafia state, I have not given up and I still constitute a one-man opposition against the thieving rule of PiS in my hometown. I also conduct research as an independent scholar, and I publish further books on my own and with the support of readers. Despite the expungement of my conviction, I still have not regained my post at the Jagiellonian University, and I am also unable to find work in any public institution. The National Science Centre, despite positive reviews from foreign experts, also regularly refuses to fund my research projects. Therefore, the financial support I receive from friends and strangers—through crowdfunding platforms—matters greatly to me.
Thank you for all contributions, and I encourage you to support my struggle. For now, it does not have a happy ending.
