Stanislaw Burdziej is responsible for the quantitative and qualitative data-collection in Poland. is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. He holds an MA in American Studies from Heidelberg University (Germany), as well as an MA and PhD in Sociology from Nicolaus Copernicus University. His current research focuses on procedural fairness and perceived legitimacy of courts in Poland. In 2010, he helped found Court Watch Poland Foundation, an NGO promoting public engagement in court monitoring and legal education. The Foundation’s program of lay monitoring of courts has resulted in a database of over 35,000 court hearing observations, and a series of 8 reports addressed at the Polish judiciary. One of the Foundation’s research project involved a study of legal experts in Poland, identifying a number of weaknesses of the current system of expertise in general. Another project aimed at studying the new developments in problem-solving justice and adopting the community court model in Poland. In collaboration with the OSCE’s ODIHR he visited courts in several countries, including Armenia, Croatia, Georgia, and Montenegro. He stayed briefly at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University in November 2013 and June 2018.

Recent publications include: ‘Fairness at Trial: The Impact of Procedural Justice and Other Experiential Factors on Criminal Defendants’ Perceptions of Court Legitimacy in Poland’, Law & Social Inquiry, April 2018, S. Burdziej, K. Guzik and B. Pilitowski; and a book Sprawiedliwość i prawomocność. O społecznej legitymizacji władzy sądowniczej [Justice and Legitimacy: On the Social Authority of Judicial Power], Torun: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, pp. 283.