From the moment it was established, the Academy of Arts and Sciences (AU) cultivated links with other countries and made a point of acting at the international level. In the nineteenth century, it initiated archival expeditions to collect and research sources for Polish history (including what was known as the Roman Expedition to the Vatican Archives – the name being connected with the opening of the archives in 1881) and sent its representatives to international congresses.
In 1893, AU became the owner of the Polish Library in Paris Polish Library in Paris and opened an Arts and Science Base there. Beginning from when it was opened, the AU’s library in Kraków was very involved in international inter-library loans. PAU (the AU had become the PAU following World War I) was a founder member of Union Académique Internationale (UAI), which was established in 1921.

PAU’s membership of UAI was restored in 1993 (PAU had been suspended in 1952–1989), and it then took part in UAI research and publication programmes.

• Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (CVA)
• Tabula Imperii Romani (TIR)
• Atlas du Monde Grec et Romain
• Corpus Antiquitatum Americanensium (CAA)
• Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum (SNG)
• Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi
• Civitas Litteraria Europaea
• Moravia Magna
• Monumenta Palaeographica Medii Aevi
• Mundus Scytho-Sarmaticus et Graeco-Romanus
• Catalogue of Islamic Art
• Objects in Central Europe
• Corpus Byzantinum

Thanks to the effective cooperation between PAU and UAI, the latter’s annual plenary congress was held in Kraków in 1999. PAU’s representative at UAI, PAU member Janusz K. Kozłowski, was selected to join the office of UAI. He was its vice president from 2007, its president from 2010, and its honorary president from 2013. UAI has more than 100 member academies in a total of 63 countries.

PAU also works with another organisation whose membership includes academies from a large number of countries: ALLEA (All European Academies), whose headquarters are in Amsterdam. PAU has taken advantage of the forum ALLEA provides to make contributions on the ethics of science and its organisation, and on copyright and the protection of personality rights. PAU took part in European Science Foundation research-programme assessments carried out by ALLEA. In March 2006, PAU hosted and co-organised (with PAN) the ALLEA General Assembly, which we regard as an honour. From 2016, PAU took part in the SAPEA and AGATE programmes run by ALLEA. In 2021, all resolutions, votes, and meetings of members took place remotely.

It should be emphasised that ALLEA has devoted a great deal of attention on its website to publications on the current epidemiological situation and has constantly addressed the coronavirus issue – in its medical, economic, and social contexts.

PAU has signed cooperation agreements with the following foreign institutions:

Slovak Academy of Sciences. Cooperation has been especially fruitful in archaeology; joint field research has been carried out, including at archaeological sites in eastern and south-western Slovakia and into the archaeology and environment of the Low Beskids. The results of this research have been published in two large volumes of Prac Komisji Prehistorii Karpat [Proceedings of the Commission for the Prehistory of the Carpathians] and in a joint volume of the two academies.

Czech Academy of Sciences – here, cooperation between the PAN and PAU Scientific Archive in Kraków and the Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences – entailing exchanges of knowledge and experience,  research visits to archives and libraries, and joint conferences and publications – has flourished.  The cooperation of Czech and Polish archaeologists within the framework of this agreement also resulted in a major joint publication.

PAU's cooperation with Hungary is twofold. On the one hand, its archaeologists have carried out joint excavations with the Institute of Archaeology at Eötvös Loránd University and have published the results of these excavations in a joint publication (2 volumes). On the other, scientific exchanges of personnel and joint scientific conferences are organised, mainly for historians, within the framework of the agreement between PAU and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .

PAU’s agreements with the academies of science of Slovenia , Macedonia, and Romania have so far produced only sporadic exchanges of personnel.

Joint archaeological research in the valley of the Dniester has been a prominent feature of PAU’s cooperation with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The findings of this work have been published in a volume of Prac Komisji Prehistorii Karpat [Proceedings of the Commission for the Prehistory of the Carpathians] and in two publications issued jointly by the two academies.   

Looser forms of cooperation link PAU with the  Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (a four-volume joint publication of W. Leitsch’s work on the court of Sigismund III Vasa and participation in annual assemblies), with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Academy of Athens (a joint two-volume publication of the results of archaeological research in the Greek islands).

Faculty II of PAU has signed a cooperation agreement with the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius (2009) and with the Polish Scientific Society in Żytomierz (2010; from 2011 there has been a joint yearbook Studia Politologica Ucraino-Polona [Ukrainian-Polish Political Studies], volume I 2011, volume II 2012).

PAU's international cooperation is also enshrined in agreements concluded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including with France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, and Egypt.
A representative of PAU, who at the same time is also a representative of Poland, participates in the work of the international committee Thesaurus Linguae Latinae that is run by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

In 1994, a PAU Arts and Science Base was established in New York under the auspices of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America , which kept the PAU tradition alive during World War II (from 1942) and during PAU’s suspension in 1952–1989. It was not possible to continue its brief period of activity owing to a lack of funds. We are striving to revive it.
For now, PAU is sharing the costs of publishing Polish Review, which is the organ of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America and, since 2014, has been a joint quarterly.

Contacts were also established with the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Canada, which was established in 1943 as a branch of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York and which has operated as an independent Canadian institute since 1976. It too assumed the status of a PAU Arts and Science Base. PAU and the Canadian base have already published five books together and PAU also supports the Canadian base by sending speakers. In addition, it provides financial support to the base and jointly organises some of its academic sessions.

PAU has become involved with the programme of the Polish Institute of History in Rome, which is financed by the Lanckoroński Foundation. When the institute was dissolved following the death of Karolina Lanckorońska, PAU took over a large number of its publications, including editing and issuing the Records of the Apostolic Nunciature in Poland (Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae). So far, 21 volumes have appeared under the PAU imprint in this series (24 volumes had already been issued in Rome).

Mention should be made of some foreign PAU research not based on formalised agreements between academies. One example was dr hab. Jan Chochorowski’s archaeological excavation of a Scythian barrow in Ryzhanovka, Ukraine, which was supported financially by PAU and which drew on the traditions of the institution. This research produced spectacular results in 1995–1998.
PAU also supported PAU member Jan Machnik's archaeological research into a Transnistrian settlement before grants from Komitet Badań Naukowych [State Committee for Scientific Research] could be obtained for the purpose.
Similarly, following on from pre-war intentions, PAU has contributed to archaeological research in Greece on a sequence of strata in Cave No. 1 in Klissoura (eastern Peloponnese), unique in that part of Europe, which contains traces of settlement and palaeontological finds from the period of the last glaciation. This research contributes to our understanding not only of the evolution of culture within Greece, but also of climatic and palaeoecological changes over the last 100,000 years. These enquiries were led by PAU member Janusz K. Kozłowski – first with the support of PAU and later with the support of research grants. The results of the Klissoura research were published jointly by the Academy of Athens and PAU. Pursuant to the agreement on cultural cooperation between Poland and Egypt, PAU – together with the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University – has participated in archaeological research in the Nile Delta.

PAU is now conducting well over a dozen research projects, which are supported by  the Ministry of Education and Science (now National Science Centre and National Programme for the Development of the Humanities). PAU has also benefited from grants awarded by the Senate of the Republic of Poland, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and the Małopolska Voivodship Regional Operational Programme.
The indefinite grant from the Lanckoroński Foundation for the publication of Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae series at PAU has already been mentioned.
Go to the project’s website: Nuntiaturae Polonae.