Zbytniewska Karolina
Karolina Zbytniewska – journalist, political commentator, and researcher of populism. Since 2022, she has been teaching at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, University of Warsaw. She is also affiliated with the Democracy Institute of the Central European University (CEU) as a Research Fellow. Her PhD dissertation, Populist Skirmishers and the Erosion of Civility: A New Force in Populist Movements, was submitted in December 2024; the defense is planned for late 2025 or early 2026.
For over 14 years, she has served as Editor-in-Chief of EURACTIV Poland, a media outlet specializing in EU affairs. She is President of the Global Political Network Foundation and a Board Member of the European think-and-do-tank Europe MédiaLab. A graduate of the University of Warsaw and the University of Central Lancashire (UK). She has been awarded prestigious research fellowships, including the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship and the Re:constitution Fellowship. She has spoken at numerous international expert and academic conferences, including Chatham House, Ditchley Park, Salzburg Global Forum, Hambach Democracy Dialogue, Budapest Forum, and Prague Populism Conference, among others.
Research interests
Populism; political communication; the brutalization of political language; media and democracy; disinformation; the public sphere in the age of digital platforms; European integration and the transformations of populism in Central and Eastern Europe.
Unit
Department of European Union Policies
Recent publications:
Zbytniewska, K. (2022). Populist skirmishers: Frontrunners of populist radical right in Poland. Politics and Governance, 10(4), 72–83. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.
Zbytniewska, K. (2021). Demand of high-quality information on the rise. In Catalyst or destabiliser? – COVID-19 and its impact on the media landscape worldwide (pp. 26–41). Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
Zbytniewska, K. (2020). Media freedom in Poland – 2020 report: No vaccine for press woes. In A lockdown for independent media? n-ost & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Zbytniewska, K., & Pető, A. (in preparation). Skirmishing femininity: Female populist skirmishers and the gendered politics of illiberalism. Politics and Governance, 2026.
