Tomasz Kamusella

T Kamusella speaking at the First Codification Conference of the Silesian Language in June 2008

Tomasz Kamusella FRHistS (born 1967, Kędzierzyn, Upper Silesia, Poland) is a European scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity.^[1]

Education

He was educated at the University of Silesia, Sosnowiec Campus, Poland; Potchefstroom University (now part of the North-West University), Potchefstroom, South Africa;^[2][3] and the Central European University (co-accredited then by the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom), Prague Campus,^[4] Czech Republic. He obtained his doctorate in Political Science from the Institute of Western Affairs (Instytut Zachodni), Poznań, Poland and habilitation in Cultural Studies from the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland.^[5]

Academic career

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.^[6][7] From 2002–06, he did postdoctoral research in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy; the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., United States;^[8] the Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM)), Vienna, Austria;^[9] 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,^[10][11] in 2010–11 at the Cracow University of Economics, Kraków, Poland;^[12] and in 2011 did research in the Slavic Research Center,^[13] Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.^[14] Currently, he teaches in the School of History (Centre for Transnational and Spatial History^[15]) at the University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland.^[16]

In 2004 the board of University of Opole Department of Philology formally distanced itself from the theories propagated by Kamusella in a press release published by Gazeta Wyborcza, alleging methodological inadequacies and tendentious conclusions among other controversies in his historical research.^[17]

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^[18]—was praised in leading academic journals,^{[19][20][21][22]} including by Yale's Tim Snyder and Cambridge's Peter Burke.^[23]

Career in civil service

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 1999–2002, 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 cooperation 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.^[24] This center 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 cooperation agreement between this Spanish region and the Opole Voivodeship.^[25]

Books in English

• Creating Languages in Central Europe During the Last Millennium. 2015. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot, 168 pp.; ISBN 9781137507839.^[26]
• The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe. 2009. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Silesia and Central European Nationalisms: The Emergence of National and Ethnic Groups in Prussian Silesia and Austrian Silesia, 1848–1918. 2007. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 386 pp. ISBN 978-1-55753-371-5.

Books in Polish

• W bżuhu vieloryba [In a Whale's Belly, a collection of essays on nationalism and language politics in Asia, the Balkans and Central Europe. Introduction by Prof Wojciech J Burszta]. 2006. Toruń, Poland: Wydawnictwo A Marszałek, 305 pp. ISBN 978-83-7441-383-1.

References

External links

• Works by or about Tomasz Kamusella in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Tomasz Kamusella. 2011 Podcast. Scripts and Politics in Modern Central Europe. Tartu, Estonia: University of Tartu