Jacek Kucharczyk is President of the Executive Board of the Institute of Public Affairs, one of Poland’s leading think tanks, where he has worked as a policy analyst since 1997. He received a PhD in sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences and has studied at the Graduate School for Social Research in Warsaw, the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, the University of Kent at Canterbury (MA in philosophy) and Warsaw University (MA in English studies). In the 1980s, he was active in the independent student movement and clandestine publishing. Dr Kucharczyk has been a co-founder and board member of a number of international NGOs, including the Prague Civil Society Centre, the Policy Association for an Open Society (PASOS) and the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) in Brussels. Dr Kucharczyk is also a member of the Think Tank Fund and Scholarship Program Advisory Boards at Open Society Foundations, as well as a board member of the National School of Public Administration in Warsaw. He has authored and edited articles, reports, policy briefs and books on European integration, democratic governance, democracy assistance and populism. He frequently comments on current domestic and European affairs and political developments for Polish and international media.