ESSHC 2025 (Leiden) and CBSE 2025 (Cambridge)

All panelists and panel organizers of the panel "‘New avenues in studying diaspora-homeland relations during Cold War era".at the CBSE 2025 in Cambridge

In March and April 2025, our project members Lars Fredrik Stöcker and Martin Gumiela attended the European Social Science History Conference 2025 (ESSHC) in Leiden and the 16th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE) at the University of Cambridge.

In Leiden, Lars Fredrik Stöcker presented in the panel "Social and cultural history of foreign investment: International business and European transformations since 1989" his paper on "Socialist globalization and compatriot investments in late-socialist economies".
Martin Gumiela's paper "Relying on the diaspora: People’s Poland’s economic cooperation with compatriots in the West" was part of the panel "Transglobal impact of migration and remittances: Historical point of view (1950 - 1990).

At the CBSE (University of Cambridge), our two project members presented their papers in the panel ‘New avenues in studying diaspora-homeland relations during Cold War era".
Martin Gumiela's paper was about "Mobilizing cross-bloc business relations: Diaspora ties as lifelines for private entrepreneurship in state-socialist Poland" and Lars Fredrik Stöcker presented on "Diaspora Actors as Brokers of Economic Globalization during and after the Cold War".

Many thanks to the conference organizers for these great and stimulating events and especially for the organizers of the panels!

New book release

We are pleased to announce that in February 2025, the edited volume ‘Varieties of Economic Nationalism in Cold War Europe. Small State Responses to Economic Changes, 1960s-1980s’ (Bloomsbury Academic, London 2025), edited by Adrian Brisku (Charles University Prague), Martin Gumiela and Lars Fredrik Stöcker (both University of Vienna) was released. 

The edited volume was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and is the result of a collaboration involving the project "A Breach in the System. The Polonia Firms 1976 - 1994".

The book is open access and can be downloaded here.

New project member

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Stephanie Weismann as a new team member who is joining our team on 1 July 2024! She is a cultural historian and her research interests include, among others, the history of smell, sensory history and the history of everyday life. As part of the project Stephanie Weismann will be mainly researching the history of one of the largest Polonia firms, "Inter-Fragrances".