Biography
Zenon Wiśniewski is a full professor of economics at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and a Chairman of the Committee on Labour and Social Policy Sciences at the Polish Academy of Sciences. After studying economics at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (1968 to 1972) and receiving his doctorate from the Poznań University of Economics in 1980, Wiśniewski was awarded habilitation in 1994 (also from the University of Toruń). In 1999 the President of the Republic of Poland awarded him a scientific title of "professor of economics".
He has written over two hundred scholarly articles and chapters in scientific books - 50 of them have been published abroad: in Germany, U.S.A., Austria and United Kingdom. As a scientific editor he has also edited 27 books.
Professor Wiśniewski is widely known for his research on labour market issues, particularly labour market deregulation in the European Union and active labour market policies. For a long time, he has specialized in research on enhancing the effectiveness of labour market policies through their systematic evaluation and the introduction of procedures for profiling the unemployed. This is evidenced by numerous publications devoted to these particular issues. A significant contribution of his research team to the development of studies on the effectiveness of labour market policies in Poland is not only demonstrated by the new evidence on the employment effects of basic labour market programmes, but also through a wider application and dissemination of the propensity score matching method in this type of research, which is of a fundamental importance in estimating causal effects.
Professor Wiśniewski has received numerous prestigious research fellowships at German universities, at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg and the Social Science Research Centre (WZB) in Berlin. He was also visiting researcher at the University of Glasgow and held visiting professorships at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Munich. He was granted by the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation, Commerzbank-Foundation, NATO Democratic Institutions Fellowship, the European Union Phare COST and ACE programme and also Dekaban Lidle-Foundation. He was managing large teams within the frames of educational Tempus programme, as well as national and international research projects. He gained valuable experience in implementing Research Framework Programmes of the European Community and research projects for the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, of which the results were well-received.
Zenon Wiśniewski was awarded Wacław Szubert Medal of distinguished merits for the development of labour and social policy sciences by the Polish Academy of Sciences (2013), Pro Publico Bono Medal awarded by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy (2015) and Individual Prize of the Minister for the National Education for his book on "Employment and labour market policies in the Federal Republic of Germany" (1995).