Burdziej, Stanislaw

Stanisław Burdziej  holds an MA in American Studies from Heidelberg University (Germany), as well as an MA and PhD in Sociology from Nicolaus Copernicus University (Torun, Poland).

His most recent research focuses on cultural expertise, an emerging concept regarding the use of social scientific evidence before the court. Another area of interest includes procedural fairness and perceived legitimacy of courts in Poland. In 2010, he helped found Court Watch Poland Foundation, an NGO and think tank promoting public engagement in court monitoring and legal education. The Foundation’s program of lay monitoring of courts has resulted in a unique database of over 50,000 court hearing observations, and a series of reports addressed at the Polish judiciary. One project aimed at studying the new developments in problem-solving justice and adopting the community court model in Poland. Another – the pitfalls of the current system of preventing domestic violence in Poland. In collaboration with the OSCE’s ODIHR he visited courts in several countries, including Armenia, Croatia, Georgia, and Montenegro. Since 2019 he has served as a lecturer at the Polish National School for Judiciary and Prosecution.

Area(s) of expertise: Sociology of law; social psychology of justice; legal anthropology