W. P. Malecki (Wojciech Małecki) is University Professor and Head of the Department of Literary Theory at the University of Wrocław, Poland. His research combines quantitative empirical methods with theoretical insights from the humanities and social sciences to investigate the effects of narratives on attitudes, perceptions, and behavior, particularly in relation to environmental issues, as well as audience responses to AI-generated art and media.

His work has been published in journals including New Media & Society, Poetics, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, PLOS ONE, Climatic Change, and Science Education, and has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, Newsweek, and Psychology Today. His books include Human Minds and Animal Stories: How Narratives Make Us Care About Other Species (Routledge, 2019) and Empirical Ecocriticism (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).

He has also published extensively on pragmatist philosophy, serving as co-editor of two volumes of Richard Rorty’s previously unpublished papers (Cambridge University Press, 2020; Princeton University Press, 2022) and as author of Embodying Pragmatism (Peter Lang, 2010; Chinese edition, China Social Sciences Press, 2019).

Malecki has been an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Augsburg, and a visiting fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Utrecht University, Peking University, and other institutions. He currently leads a National Science Centre-funded research project investigating the social influence of climate fiction.