Stefan Halikowski Smith

Honorary Associate Research Professor, Warwick University; Professeur des Universites at Conseil National des Universites; Lehraufbetragter, Universitat Bremen

Royal Leamington Spa, England, United Kingdom

About

I have been in universities for most of my life: Cambridge, where I won prizes, then European University Institute in Italy and Central European University in Budapest. Three years at Brown University in Rhode Island in the largest Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Department in the USA, and then a long phase at Swansea University. And now, after five books (can count seven if edited) and 60 research articles, I may be on the move again, perhaps to bring myself closer to family in Brussels (since 2013). But I am also proud of being a middle Englander and a stone's throw from Oxford, the city of my birth. Intellectually speaking, I am interested in languages, and their history, recent methodologies of computational analysis (T-Sne embeddings), documentary and archival (positivist) History. Have written books specialising on the Portuguese 'comunidade' in Ayutthaya, Portugal Indico, the maritime world of early modern South-east Asia. More recently, with a crop of family deaths and zero university travel allowances, I have a book to finish on the Mannerist frienzes in the Sala Czerwona in Danzig/Gdansk, and another on family history -- Malopolska Wschodnia - with some tragicomic and quirky nineteenth-century Lwowian fables to throw in for good measure, worth performing with an sixteenth-century 'kontusz' and armed with a karabela....

Experience

  • Professeur des Universites at Conseil National des Universites
    Jun 2026 - Present · 2 mos

  • Lehraufbetragter at Universitat Bremen
    Oct 2025 - Present · 10 mos

    courses on Wirtschaftsrechtsgeschichte and Zivilrecht

  • University of Warwick (1 yr 11 mos)
    • Honorary Associate Research Professor at Warwick University
      Sep 2024 - Present · 1 yr 11 mos

    • Gastprofessor op K U Leuven / Honorary Associate Research Professor Warwick University
      Sep 2024 - Present · 1 yr 11 mos

  • Gastprofessor op Universiteit K U Leuven at Universiteit K U Leuven
    Jul 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 1 mo

    Teaching 'Global Scientific and Technological Interactions in Pre-modern East and Southeast Asia' (B-KUL-F0BR2). Looking for opportunities to collaborate on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and LLMs (Large Language Models) as a way of invigorating the practice of History.

  • University of Warsaw (5 yrs 6 mos)
    • Wykladowca wizytujacy
      Sep 2020 - Feb 2026 · 5 yrs 6 mos

      prestigious ZIP programme. Hard work, teaching three courses simultaneously, but very rewarding. Time for research in Biblioteka Narodowa. Produced some good work there, longer, and I would have produced more.

    • Wykladowca wizytujacy
      Sep 2020 - Apr 2021 · 8 mos

      https://zip.uw.edu.pl/wyklad-otwarty-dr-.-stefana-halikowskiego-smitha-ze-swansea-university