Maciej Ruczaj was born in Poznań, Poland, and in 1998, he became a “Prague Pole”. He studied English at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University – his MA thesis dealing with Flann O’Brien received the Mathesius Award – and political science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. In 2015, he completed his doctoral studies at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures and defended his dissertation on the works of Patrick Pearse from the perspective of political theories. Originally working as a journalist, he joined the Polish Institute in Prague in 2008, and served as its the director in 2016-2023. Currently he holds the post of Ambassador of Poland to Slovakia. He regularly contributes to Czech newspapers and magazines, mainly on Polish history, literature, and society.

Edited publications

• Pánbíčkáři: Odkud se vzal polský katolicismus (2016)
• Chtěli jsme být svobodní: Příběhy z Varšavského povstání 1944 (2015)
• Jagellonské dědictví: Kapitoly z dějin středovýchodní Evropy (2012)
• Návrat člověka bez vlastností: Krize kultury v současné polské esejistice (2010)
• Pravým okem: Antologie současného polského politického myšlení (2010)

Academic essays

• “The Übermensch of the Western world: self and nation in The Singer” (Patrick Pearse and Theatre, 2016)
• “The Necessary Synthesis”: Dialectics of Tradition and Modernity in Patrick Pearse’s Writings” (Tradition and Modernity, 2014)
• “Daringly, yet with Reverence”: Pearse, Mickiewicz and the Theology of National Messianism (Études irlandaises, 2014)
• “Liturgy of Nation‐Formation: Patrick Pearse and the Theological Background of the Easter Rising of 1916” (Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2013)
• “Beyond the Boundaries of the Self: Padraic Pearse’s The Singer” (Boundary Crossings, 2012)
• “Liturgy and Revolution: Two Plays by Patrick Pearse and Translatio Sacrii” (The Politics of Irish Writing, 2010)