section_path: Early life and education
section_name: Early life and education
paragraph_text: Early life and education
  
  Rafał Kazimierz Trzaskowski was born on 17 January 1972 in Warsaw, the son of Polish jazz musician and composer Andrzej Trzaskowski and Teresa née Arens. His half-brother Piotr Ferster was the director of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret in Kraków. His great-grandfather, Bronisław Trzaskowski, was a linguist who established some of the first girls' secondary schools (gimnazja) in Poland. As an 8-year-old, he appeared on "Our Backyard" (Polish: Nasze podwórko), a 1980 Polish children's television series.
  
  Trzaskowski attended 11th Mikołaj Rej Liceum, Marcellin College in Sydney, and Cranbrook Kingswood School, a private school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA (1990–1991). He then studied international relations and English philology at the University of Warsaw, graduating in 1996. He subsequently graduated in European studies from the College of Europe in Natolin (1997). He was granted a scholarship at Oxford University in 1996 as well as at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris in 2002. In 2004, he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in political science at the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Journalism and Political Science, after completing a dissertation titled "The dynamics of the European Union's institutional reform" under the supervision of Stanisław Parzymies.
  
  From 1995, he worked as a simultaneous interpreter and an English teacher. In 1998, he became an academic teacher at the National School of Public Administration, and in 2002 at the Collegium Civitas. His scientific interests primarily concern the European integration and international affairs. Since 2002, he has also worked as an analyst at the European Centre in Natolin.