Zaproszenie na seminarium ISESS UW
12 01 2026
W imieniu Centrum Doskonałości w Naukach Społecznych UW zapraszamy Państwa na pierwsze seminarium ISESS w 2026 roku.
The seminar will be led by Marcin Wroński and Maria Minakowska from Collegium of World Economy SGH Warsaw School of Economics.
The title of the presentation is:
Intergenerational Mobility over Nine Generations: Evidence from Poland, 1800-1984
Date: Wednesday, January 14
Time: 13:15
Venue: Commission Room [Sala Komisji] in the Kazimierzowski Palace (Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28). The room is located on the third floor, lift is available in the building.
Venue: Commission Room [Sala Komisji] in the Kazimierzowski Palace (Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28). The room is located on the third floor, lift is available in the building.
About the talk:
This paper examines how elite status persists across major institutional disruptions in Poland, from partitions to socialism. Using a unique dataset linking 18,800 elite biographies with over 1.2 million genealogical records, it measures kinship up to the sixth degree to capture both inheritance and transmission of status. Results show that elite persistence is largely carried by distant relatives and maternal lines, with first-degree ties accounting for only 20% of connections. Persistence remains high through the 19th and early 20th centuries, declining gradually during the socialist era, highlighting that mobility increases slowly rather than resetting after major shocks. The study reframes elite reproduction as a network of extended family relations, challenging conventional two-generation approaches and offering a long-run perspective on social mobility.
Presentation details and abstract are available here:
ISESS Seminar Website
Seminar announcement
The seminar will be conducted in English, held in person only, and no registration is required.
We warmly encourage your participation and look forward to seeing you there!
Marcin Wroński (BIO):
I am an assistant professor at the Collegium of World Economy SGH Warsaw School of Economics. I am a fellow of the World Inequality Database (Paris School of Economics, France), the Global Labor Organization (Essen, Germany), and Teaching Fellow of CERGE-EI Foundation (Prague, Czech Republic).
I am interested in economic inequality, economic history, and economic policy. Currently, I am investigating the long-term evolution of economic inequality in Poland, studying the long-term impact of the Holocaust on the Polish economy & society, and exploring the consequences of the economic transition in Poland. I am a Principal Investigator (PI) of research project “The long-run evolution of economic inequality and intergenerational mobility in Poland” funded by the Polish National Science Centre (OPUS competition, 2023 – 2027; 2.1 M. PLN)In the academic year 2024-2025, I visited the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. In the academic year 2021/2022, I visted the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics.Besides my academic duties, I supervise the financial market in Poland as a voting member of the Financial Supervision Authority. In the past I was employed as a consultant at the World Bank (Global Poverty & Equity Group) and in the private sector.I am an active participant in public debate in Poland. I often comment on economic issues in leading Polish media.My hobbies include: long walks, board games, literature, animals.Maria Minakowska (BIO):Dr. Maria Jadwiga Minakowska, born in 1972 in Olsztyn as Marek Jerzy Minakowski, is a researcher and scholar specializing in digital humanities, an internet entrepreneur, and the creator of major databases in the fields of mass genealogy and historical demography. She graduated in philosophy from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (studies from 1991, PhD in 1998) and authored a doctoral dissertation titled Formal Logic Before Aristotle, which combines topics from natural language processing, mathematical logic, and classical philology.From 1997 to 2011, she held managerial positions at the Polish web portal Onet, overseeing the economic news department, mail services, and search engine, and in her final years serving as chief scientist. Since 2002, and fully from 2011 onward, she has focused on developing a genealogical database of Central European historical elites, publicly accessible via Sejm-Wielki.pl and Wielcy.pl. Her research primarily concerns social network analysis and historical demography, with a particular focus on intergenerational transmission of social and cultural capital. She was the founder and first marshal of the Association of Descendants of the Great Sejm.Maria Minakowska is a transgender woman who socially transitioned in 2024 and is currently undergoing medical (hormonal) and legal transition (awaiting a court ruling). Her transgender identity is fully public; she openly shares her experiences in television, press, and online media. As a single mother raising a teenage daughter, she has a close connection with the community of parents of transgender children.Her biography is available on Wikipedia under the entry Maria Minakowska (https://pl.
A detailed interview was published on March 8, 2025, in Gazeta Wyborcza.
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A detailed interview was published on March 8, 2025, in Gazeta Wyborcza.
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Upcoming ISESS seminars 2025/2026:
14 January – Marcin Wroński / Maria Minakowska
25 February – Paweł Bukowski
25 March – Volha Charnysh
29 April – Eva Anduiza
6 May – Olivier Klein
3 June – Lena Adamus
More information will be regularly updated on the ISESS website: