Wojtek Jezierski

Professor

Department of Historical Studies

Mail

wojtek.jezierski@gu.se

Visiting address

Renströmsgatan 6

41255 Göteborg

Postal address

Box 200

40530 Göteborg

About Wojtek Jezierski

About me

I am Professor of history at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg since 2024. I defended my PhD thesis at Stockholm University in 2010 and in 2016 I became Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg.

I have published two monographs and co-edited seven anthologies.

Academic interests

My research has focused on power and discipline in medieval monasteries, history of emotions, hospitality and hostility in cultural encounters, conceptualizations of risk among medieval missionaries and crusaders, legitimization of elites, and cults of saints on European peripheries, particularly on the Baltic Rim. I have keen interest in theory, method, and political anthropology as well as interdisciplinary approaches in medieval studies.

I defended my thesis on power relations, surveillance and social control in early medieval monasteries in the German Empire: Total St Gall: Medieval Monastery as a Disciplinary Institution (AUS 2010).

Between 2011 and 2022, I worked in a series of externally funded projects focusing on emotions and experiences of risk and uncertainty among missionaries, crusaders, and on cultural encounters and intercultural hospitality between Christians and the local ‘pagan’ and converted communities in the Baltic Sea region between the 11th and 14th centuries. These studies resulted in two anthologies Rituals, Performatives, and Political Order in Northern Europe, c. 650–1350 (Brepols 2015) and Imagined Communities on the Baltic Rim, from the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries (Amsterdam University Press 2016). I also published a monograph on this topic: Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim, 1000-1300 (Brepols 2022)

Between 2017 and 2021, I was a member and editor of an international project investigating the emergence and legitimisation of Scandinavian elites in the High Middle Ages. The project resulted in an anthology Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050–1250, Volume III: Legitimacy and Glory (Routledge 2021).

Between 2018 and 2022, I worked as a researcher at Södertörn University and led an externally funded project Baltic Hospitality: Receiving Strangers/Providing Security on the Northern European Littoral, c. 1000-1900, which investigated the reception of strangers in the Baltic Sea region over 1000 years. The results were published as an anthology Baltic Hospitality from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century: Receiving Strangers in Northeastern Europe (Palgrave 2022)

Between 2021 and 2024 I worked as a researcher at the University of Oslo, leading a comparative project Symbolic Resources and Political Structures on the Periphery: Legitimization of the Elites in Poland and Norway, c. 1000-1300 with international funding from the National Science Centre, Poland and the Norwegian Research Council. The results of the project were published in two anthologies: Languages of Power and Elite Legitimisation in Poland and Norway, 1000–1300, a special issue of the journal Acta Poloniae Historica 129 (2024) and Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies (Brepols 2025).

Between 2021 and 2024, I led an externally funded international project Ambiguities of Hospitality: Intercultural Integration and Conflict in Host-Guest Relations on the European Borderlands, c. 1000-1350 at the Centre for Medieval Studies at Stockholm University and at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg. The results from the project were published in the anthology Guests, Strangers, Aliens, Enemies: Ambiguities of Hospitality in the Middle Ages, c. 1000–1350 (Brepols 2025).

Current projects and appointments:

At the moment I am conducting research in my own project The Domestication of the Holy Man: A Comparative Study of Heroization, Estrangement, and Sacralization of St Adalbert in the High Middle Ages with external funding from the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. In autumn 2025 and spring 2026 I am on a year-long research sabbatical.

Previous appointments:

I have previously worked at the Stockholm University, University of Oslo, Södertörn University, and Örebro University. I have had longer research visits at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, at Deutsches Historisches Institut (Warsaw), and at the Institut für Mittelalterforschung (IMAFO) der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna).

My research foci

Comparative history
Cultural encounters in the Middle Ages
Missioning and crusading in the Baltic Sea region
History of hospitality and emotions
Legitimization of political elites
Discipline, power, and social control in medieval monasteries