The beginnings of the Institute’s international cooperation date back to 1946-47, when the then head of the department, Prof. Juliusz Krzyżanowski, published his poems in the Edinburgh magazine Scotsman. In 1976, a foreign employee was hired for the first time; he was an American named Jack R. Cohn. In the years 1975-1980, several employees of the Institute served internships abroad at prestigious academic institutions such as University College London, University of Leicester and State University of New York. In the academic year 1982-83, the Institute entered into a cooperation agreement with the University of Warwick. The 1970s and 80s was a period during which many employees decided to continue their scientific careers abroad. This group included, among others, Prof. Nina Witoszek (University of Oslo), Dr Ewa Stachniak (Sheridan College, Ontario) and Dr Ewa Karpinski (York University, Toronto).

Since 2000, most of the international initiatives in which the Institute’s staff have participated have been organized within the framework of the European programs COTEPRA, CEEPUS and Socrates Erasmus. The international research and teaching program COTEPRA enabled the implementation of projects coordinated by the University of Bologna on the relationship between literary theory and modernism, and on the teaching of colonial and postcolonial literature. The CEEPUS programme enabled exchanges of students and employees with the academic centers in Brno and Szeged.

Since the late 1980s, the Institute has been actively cooperating with the Fulbright Foundation, thanks to which in the years 1987-2015 we have had 13 visiting professors from the United States, including Elizabeth Frost, Dan Hade, and Junko Yokota. In the same period, ten employees of the Institute received a Foundation scholarship, thanks to which they completed one- or two-semester scientific internships at American universities.

Currently, the most popular form of mobility for students and employees of the Institute is the Erasmus Plus programme. IFA has signed cooperation agreements with 28 universities from 12 countries, including Freie Universität Berlin, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Universitat de Barcelona, Universita degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” and Universitetet I Tromsø in Norway.