Robert F. Byrnes
Russian and East European Institute

Justyna Zając is Professor of Practice in European Security Studies in the Departments of International Studies and Political Science. She also teaches regularly at the European Academy of Diplomacy in Poland.

Professor Zając’s interests revolve around transatlantic and European security, with a focus on Poland’s foreign and security policy. She served on several executive bodies of the Polish government, including the National Strategic Review Committee appointed by the President of the Republic of Poland and the Council of Young Scientists of the Minister of Science and Higher Education, where she served as chairperson. She authored several expert opinions for Poland’s Ministry of Regional Development and National Security Bureau as well as the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

Professor Zając was a visiting scholar at George Washington University, Science Po, and the University of Belgrade, and she is a recipient of several fellowship and awards from the European Union, Ambassade de France en Pologne, the Kościuszko Foundation, and the Galilee College. She was also a two-term member of the Steering Committee of the Standing Group on International Relations of the European Consortium for Political Research.

Professor Zając has published numerous books and papers in Poland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Jordan. Her most recent book Poland’s Security Policy: The West, Russia, and the Changing International Order was published by Palgrave Macmillan (2016). Her articles appeared in European Foreign Affairs Review, The National Interest, Religion und Gesellschaft in Ost und West, Against the Current, Rocznik Integracji Europejskiej (Yearbook of European Integration), and La Lettre de l’IRSEM, among others.

She teaches courses on European Union politics; contemporary security in Europe; security, diplomacy and global governance; and theories of international politics. In 2024, IU President Pamela Whitten recognized Professor Zając’s excellent and innovative work with students on the project on Hybrid Threats in Europe prepared for the U.S. State Department.

Since fall 2021, Professor Zając has been Director of the IU Polish Studies Center, an academic unit that for almost five decades has been providing intellectual leadership at institutional and national levels and has supported Polish-related research around the world.