Natalia Nowakowska

Natalia Magdalena Nowakowska (born 8 June 1977) is an English historian of late medieval and Renaissance Europe with a particular interest in the Kingdom of Poland. She is Professor of European History at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in History at Somerville College.

Academic career Nowakowska grew up in the Polish diaspora community which formed in London after the Second World War. She read History at Lincoln College, Oxford, matriculating in 1995. After graduating she briefly worked in social policy research before returning to Lincoln College to work on her doctorate on the life and career of Cardinal Fryderyk Jagiellon, which she completed in 2003. Her doctoral supervisor was Nicholas Davidson.

Nowakowska then took up a one-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at King's College London before joining University College, Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow in October 2005. In October 2019 Nowakowska was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor of European History by the University of Oxford. She has previously served on the governing board of the university's Faculty of History.

Research Nowakowska's first monograph, based on her doctoral research, was published by Ashgate in 2007. For the book Nowakowska was named co-winner of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies' Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies alongside Geneviève Zubrzycki. A Polish translation of the book was published in 2011.

In 2012 Nowakowska was awarded a €1.4 million European Research Council Starting Grant to undertake an international project entitled "The Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Identity and Memory in Central Europe". She and her team of five postdoctoral researchers analysed the cultural memory of the Jagiellonian dynasty, producing a 2018 public exhibition at the Bodleian Library and a series of essays and monographs from this research.

In February 2022, Nowakowska gave the Ilchester Lecture at Oxford's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages on the topic 'From Tribe to Dynasty? Globalizing the Jagiellonians of Central Europe (1377–1596)'.

Nowakowska is currently working on a new global history of the Jagiellonian dynasty. In 2024 she was interviewed for another Radio 4 serial, The Reinvention of Poland, hosted by Anne McElvoy. She has also appeared as a guest in podcasts by the Historical Association and BBC History exploring the history of late medieval and early modern Poland and Lithuania and the role of the Jagiellonians in shaping central Europe during these periods. In 2026 she recorded a travel guide to Kraków for History Extra's History's Greatest Cities podcast.

Personal life Nowakowska is married to Nick Kerigan.