Witold Sobków


Witold Sobków is a Polish scholar, public servant, diplomat, and former deputy foreign minister.

Early life and education

From 1979 he studied at the University of Warsaw, obtaining an MA in English Philology in 1984 and an MA in Italian Philology in 1987.
In 1991, he was a fellow in diplomacy at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. He also studied at the universities of Siena, Perugia, and Venice.
Between 1998 and 2000, he studied Islam, Security in Southeast Asia, and basic Arabic at the University of London.
In 2008, he completed programs in the field of internal and international security at Harvard University. In the same year, he studied at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht.

Career

From 1984 to 1991, he worked as a philologist and lecturer in the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Warsaw.
In 1991, after the Solidarity Revolution, he began to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1993 to 2000 he was based at the Polish Embassy in London, where he worked his way up to the position of deputy ambassador. In 1998 he worked with the OSCE.
Returning to Poland, he held managerial positions in the ministry, serving in turn as deputy director of the Department of Western Europe, director of the Department of Non-European Countries and the United Nations System, and senior adviser to the Minister for European Affairs.
From 2002 to 2006, he was the Polish ambassador to Ireland.
From October 9, 2006, to December 27, 2006, he was the Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In January 2007, he was named a titular ambassador in the Department of Foreign Policy Strategy and Planning. From January 1, 2008, to April 9, 2010, he held the position of political director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He then served as Poland’s Permanent Representation to the United Nations in New York. From August 2012 to August 2016 he served as the Polish Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, succeeding Barbara Tuge-Erecińska. From August 2016 to February 2018 he served as Political Director at the MFA. He is now Director for Asia and the Pacific.
He is Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association and a Member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.

Selected publications