A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.— OSCAR WILDE, THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM
I grew up in Poznań, a city that knows what it means to sit at the intersection of history and politics.
My entry point was climate. I spent four years on the Youth City Council of Poznań, working with environmental NGOs, pushing green policy, learning how civic systems actually function from the inside. But the more I understood climate change, the more I understood it as something larger: a threat multiplier, a driver of displacement, a source of resource conflict. Climate wasn't just an environmental issue. It was a security issue.
That thread pulled me toward hybrid warfare, international law, the grey zone where states operate below the threshold of conventional conflict. Then came The Hague, the city where international law was invented, where it is daily tested, and where I now study at Leiden University.
Each stop added a layer to the same question: how do we build a world that actually holds together?
Chiaroscuro is my attempt to answer that. Not from a position of certainty, but from a position of relentless curiosity.
Geopolitics is hard. That's not an excuse to dumb it down, but a reason to write better. The goal is to make the difficult genuinely accessible, not falsely simple.
Being Polish, being European, being a student of Political Science in The Hague. These aren't neutral positions. I try to be honest about the view from where I stand.
Analysis without vision is just commentary. Understanding how conflict works is only meaningful if it serves the project of building something better.
I'm always open to conversations about geopolitics, hybrid warfare, digital humanitarianism, or anything that sits in the grey zone between disciplines.
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