People
in the borderlands constitute an issue that has fascinated me for
years, namely those forcibly removed from their own homelands and
migrants looking for better living conditions, crossing many borders,
both geographic and mental. I seek to tell their stories, to embed them
in a broader context, to understand them and draw conclusions.
I
am the author of six books and numerous articles and the editor of many
collective publications. My research interests are: social history and
culture of East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries,
nationalism und forced migrations in Europe, Polish diaspora in the
world, constructions of identities in border regions, German-Polish
relations, issues relating to the culture and politics of remembrance.
I
am a professor of contemporary history at the University of Adam
Mickiewicz in Poznań: from 2013 to 2018 at the Polish-German Research
Institute in Collegium Polonicum in Słubice and since 2018 at the
Faculty of History in Poznań. I lectured in cultural history of East
Central Europe at the European University of Viadrina in Frankfurt
(Oder) between 2006 and 2014 and was a visiting professor at the
universities in Calgary, Canada (2014) and El Paso, USA (2016).
In
my doctoral thesis (2001: University of Vechta, Germany, PhD
equivalent) I focused on the reception of Polish literature in Germany
after 1945. From 2001 to 2003 I was a lecturer at the College of German
at the University in Zielona Góra, Poland, where I was also
granted the university’s Science Award in 2002. Between 2005 and
2008 I was involved in a research project about the German-Polish
border region “Odra-Oder – the past, present and future of a European cultural region”, which was headed by prof. Karl Schlögel at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder).
My
Post-doc project [habilitation] was a study on forced migration and
cultural appropriation of the Oder region 1945-1948. It was funded by
the German-Polish Science Foundation and completed at the European
University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in 2012. The project resulted
in a publication of the book “Poland's Wild West”, which received the Identities Prize 2016 for the best historical book in Poland.
My
current research project id titled: „Changing borders / moving
people. Constructions of identity by migrants from Eastern to Western
Europe and to the USA in the 20th Century”. The result of it
is my book: Life in the Borderlands. Z. Anthony Kruszewski. A Biography.
Beata Halicka is
Professor of history of Central and Eastern Europe at the Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her book, Poland's Wild West,
was published in Polish and German and received the Identities Prize
2016 for the best historical book in Poland. For more on this, please
visit:
www.beatahalicka.pl