Tomasz Kamusella

The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (2008)—Kamusella’s major synthesis of the intertwining histories, nationalisms, and languages of East Central Europe—was praised in leading academic journals, including by Yale’s Timothy D. Snyder and Cambridge’s Peter Burke. The 2020 Times Higher Education World University Ranking singles out Kamusella as one of the three famous alumni of the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

In 2004 Opole Voivodeship politicians opposed his publication of “Regional Glossary of the Opolskie Voivodeship” which included the interpretation that “Silesia was part of the eastern German lands under the temporary administration of Poland and the USSR 1945-1991”. The politicians lodged a criminal complaint with the Polish prosecution who declined to take the case as there was no premise for the crime. The board of the University of Opole’s Faculty of Philology formally distanced itself from the theories propagated by Kamusella in a press release published in the local Opole insert of Gazeta Wyborcza, alleging methodological inadequacies, tendentious conclusions and “polonophobia”, among others, in his historical research. According to Kamusella, these accusations were unsubstantiated. In the Glossary he presented the official doctrine adopted in West Germany before 1992.

In 1996, he was employed as the regional Plenipotentiary on European Integration to the Regional Governor (Pełnomocnik Wojewody ds. Integracji Europejskiej) in the Regional Authority (Urząd Wojewódzki), Opole. Later, from 1999 to 2002, he acted as Advisor on International Affairs to the Regional President (Doradca Marszałka ds. Współpracy z Zagranicą), Self-Governmental Regional Authority (Urząd Marszałkowski), Opole. In co-operation with the University of Opole, between 1997 and 2001, he managed the application in the Council of Europe, and financing that led to the establishment of the European Documentation Center in Opole. This centre makes acquis communautaire available to the inhabitants of the Voivodeship of Opole and constituted a basis for founding a Department of Law at the University of Opole. In 1998, in the framework of the European Visitors Program of the European Union, he also visited the Spanish Autonomous Community of Galicia, which, in the following year, led to the signing of the co-operation agreement between this Spanish region and the Opole Voivodeship.

In 1994/95, he taught in the Language Teachers’ Training College (Nauczycielskie Kolegium Języków Obcych), Opole, Poland, and between 1995 and 2007 at the University of Opole, Opole, Poland. From 2002 to 2006, he did postdoctoral research in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy; the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., United States; the Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM)), Vienna, Austria; and the Herder-Institut (de), Marburg, Germany. As visiting professor, in 2007–10, he taught Central and Eastern European History and Polish History and Politics in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, in 2010–11 at the Cracow University of Economics, Kraków, Poland; and in 2011 did research in the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. Currently, he teaches in the School of History (Centre for Transnational and Spatial History) at the University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland.

Tomasz Kamusella FRHistS (born 1967) is a Polish scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity.