Mikołaj Pawlak is associate professor of sociology at the Institute of Social Prevention and Resocialisation, University of Warsaw, where he serves as head of Chair of Sociology of Norms, Deviance and Social Control. He is also involved in the Center for Excellence in Social Sciences where he chairs the scientific council. He is a co-organizer of the seminar Nowy instytucjonalizm – teorie i badania [New institutionalism – theories and research].
Mikołaj Pawlak’s research interests cover new institutional theory, migration studies, sociology of knowledge/ignorance, and failure studies. He recently co-edited Routledge International Handbook of Failure – the first comprehensive volume constituting failure studies. In the previous book, he co-authored Ignorance and Change he analyzes the refugee crisis from the perspective of ignorance studies. In the book Tying Micro and Macro he critically discusses the thesis on the sociological vacuum and presents it in the context of the debate on the micro- and macro-levels in sociological theory. His first book Organizacyjna reakcja na nowe zjawisko applies the new institutional perspective to the problem of emerging policies of refugee integration in Poland.
Mikołaj Pawlak graduated from sociology at the University of Warsaw in 2004 (the MA thesis was supervised by prof. Jarosław Kilias) and completed his PhD thesis under the supervision of prof. Joanna Kurczewska at the Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, in 2011. In 2019 he received a habilitation from the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Resocialisation at the University of Warsaw.
He gained research experience by engaging in the studies of the Research Group of Sociology and Anthropology of Culture at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2004-2011), by working as a researcher and analyst at various studies focusing on migration conducted by the Institute of Public Affairs (2004-2010), and as a Head of Research Group at Caritas Polska (2009-2012).
Membership in editorial boards: Stan Rzeczy.
Membership in scholarly associations: Polish Sociological Association [Vice–President] | European Sociological Association | European Group for Organizational Studies | Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.
Civic involvement: The Foundation for Social Diversity [member of the Supervisory Board].