Dr. Rafał Leśkiewicz

Institute of National Remembrance, Poland

Rafał Leśkiewicz – (1977), Ph.D., scientist and manager; has worked for the Institute of National Remembrance since 2001. Between 2007 and 2010 as a Deputy Director of the Office for Preservation and Dissemination of Archival Records and a Director between 2010- 2016. Since September 2016 he has held the post of the Deputy Director of the Historical Research Office. In 2016 he took on the position of the Director of the Centre for Informatics Technology at the Ministry of Digital Affairs. Currently, he is an Expert at the Ministry of Digital Affairs. From January 2017 to the end of May 2019 he was the Director of the IT Office at the IPN. Currently, he is the Plenipotentiary of the President of the IPN for conducting research on terror in occupied Poland In the years 1939 – 1945 and also Deputy Director of the Historical Research Office.

He is an author, co-author and editor of over 120 scientific and popular science publications on Polish contemporary history and the management of the archives of the communist Security Service. He has participated in many international scientific conferences in Poland and abroad. He has published articles on the accountability for the totalitarian past and the remembrance of victims of totalitarian regimes. He is the author of the first implemented endeavour for the digitisation of the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance.

From 2012 to 2013 he was invited by Tunisian state institutions as an expert for workshops preparing Tunisian state administrative institutions and non-governmental organisations for the procedures to hold Ben Ali’s dictatorial regime to account.

During 2010-2016 he chaired the Polish-Ukrainian working group of historians and archivists who prepared research papers for a series of publications entitled “Poland and Ukraine in the 20s and 30s of 20th Century. Unknown Documents from the Archives of the Secret Services”. He was also a member of the Polish-Georgian, Polish-Lithuanian and Polish-Romanian working groups.