Marta Grzechnik is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Scandinavian and Finnish Studies at the University of Gdansk, Poland. She is a historian with research interest in the twentieth century history of the Baltic Sea region and north-eastern Europe, regional history, history of historiography, history of colonialism. She obtained her PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 2010. In 2018-2019 she was a German Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for Eueopran Studies at Harvard University, USA.Between 2012 and 2016 she was a post-doctoral fellow in the Interdisciplinary Research Training Group “Baltic Borderlands” at the University of Greifswald in Germany. Her publications include: Regional histories and historical regions. The concept of the Baltic Sea region in Polish and Swedish historiography (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012) and Beyond the Sea. Reviewing the Manifold Dimensions of Water as Barrier and Bridge, edited together with Heta Hurskainen (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2015).
“Gdynia 1920–1939: Poland’s Gateway to the World”. Studia Historica Gedanensia, vol. 13 (2022), pp. 204–224.
“‘Ad Maiorem Poloniae Gloriam!’ Polish Inter-colonial Encounters in Africa in the Interwar Period”. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 48, no. 5 (2020), pp. 826–845.
“The Missing Second World: On Poland and Postcolonial Studies”. Interventions. International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 27, no. 7 (2019), pp. 998–1014.
“Aspirations of imperial space. The colonial project of the Maritime and Colonial League in interwar Poland”. CES Papers – Open Forum Series 2018–2019. Cambridge, MA: Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University 2019.
“Love of wide open waters. The Polish maritime programme according to the Baltic and Western Institutes in the aftermath of the Second World War (1945–ca. 1950)”. Acta Poloniae Historica, vol. 117 (2018), pp. 195–222.
“Background Characters? The Nordic Region and European Colonialism”. Studia Scandinavica, no. 1 (2017), pp. 128–137.
“‘Recovering’ Territories: The use of history in the integration of the new Polish western borderland after the Second World War”. Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 69, no. 4 (2017), pp. 668–692.
“Space of failed expectations? Building a Baltic Sea region after the end of the Cold War”. Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, vol. 26, no. 5 (2016), pp. 29–42.
“Equilibrium in the Baltic. The Polish Baltic Institute’s view on the Nordic and Baltic Sea cooperation in the interwar period”. Ajalooline Ajakiri. The Estonian Historical Journal, no. 3 (2015), pp. 327–350.
“Intermarium: The Baltic and the Black Seas on the Polish mental maps in the interwar period”. The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, vol. 6, no. 1 (2014), pp. 81–96.
“Making use of the past: The role of historians in the Baltic Sea region building”. Journal of Baltic Studies, vol. 43, no. 3 (2012), pp. 329–343.
“Główne tendencje szwedzkiej historiografii dotyczącej regionu Morza Bałtyckiego po roku 1989” [Main themes of the Swedish historiography of the Baltic Sea region after 1989]. Zapiski historyczne, vol. 74, no. 4 (2009), pp. 59–76.
Review: Transregional Connections in the History of East-Central Europe, edited by Katja Castryck-Nauman, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2021. Journal of East Central European Studies/Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, vol. 73, no. 3 (2023), pp. 458–459.
Review: Piotr Wawrzeniuk, Med polska ögon. Försvarsförmåga och hotbilder kring Östersjön i polsk militärrapportering 1919–1939, Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2020. Studia Scandinavica, vol. 25, no. 1 (2021), pp. 197–198.
Review: Jochen Lingelbach, On the Edges of Whiteness. Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War. New York 2020. H-Soz-Kult, 20.05.2021, <www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-95265>.
Review: Grażyna Szelągowska, Krystyna Szelągowska, Historia Norwegii XIX i XX wieku, Warszawa 2019. Studia Scandinavica, vol. 24, no. 4 (2020), pp. 180–182.
Review: Madeleine Hurd (ed.) Bordering the Baltic. Scandinavian Boundary-Drawing Processes 1900–2000, Lit Verlag, Berlin 2010. Zapiski Historyczne, vol. 76, no. 3 (2012).
4–5 September 2023: “Colonial Entanglements in Central and Eastern Europe Before 1939”. Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw in cooperation with Leibniz Science Campus “Eastern Europe – Global Area”. University of Warsaw, Poland. Paper delivered: “Sea, overseas connections, and aspirations of global status – the case of interwar Poland”.
25–27 May 2023: “The annexation of the Klaipėda (Memel) region to Lithuania, 1923: its international significance and legacy in the context of European borderland micro-regions”. International conference jointly organized by Baltic Region History and Archaeology at Klaipėda University, the Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius, and the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge. Vilnius and Klaipėda, Lithuania. Paper delivered: “The importance of access to the Baltic Sea and control of own ports for the new states in post-First World War Europe. The case of Gdynia and the Danzig corridor”.
12–15 April 2023: 14th European Social Science History Conference. University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Paper delivered: “Colonial Knowledge in Interwar Poland: the Case of the Maritime and Colonial League”.
1–2 December 2022: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies Annual Conference: “Where are we now? Perspectives on East European Area Studies today”. Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Paper delivered: “Postcolonial perspectives on studying East Central Europe”.
25–28 October 2022: Korean-German Comparative Border Studies Forum, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea. Paper delivered: “‘Recovering’ Territories: The Use of History in the Integration of the New Polish Western Borderlands after the Second World War”.
7–9 July 2022: “Baltic Sea in Exchange. Transformations between Conflict and Cooperation”. IFZO Annual Conference, Greifswald, Germany. Session chair.
23–25 June 2022: World History Association’s 31st Annual Conference, Bilbao, Spain. Paper delivered: “Modernisation through maritimity: Sea and overseas connections in interwar Poland’s attempts to achieve global status.”
24–25 March 2022: “Baltic Ports. Exchange, Conflicts, Entanglements.” International Conference at the International Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Szczecin University in Kulice, Poland [online]. Paper delivered: “Port Cities on the Baltic Sea as a Symbol of Modernisation. The Case of Interwar Gdynia.”
22–23 October 2021: “Re-examining Empires from the Margins: Towards a New Imperial History of Europe.” International workshop at the Munich Centre for Global History (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), Munich, Germany. Session chair.
7–8 October 2021: “Gdańsk-Danzig-Gduńsk within the Baltic Borderlands.” International conference, Gdańsk, Poland. Paper delivered: “Gdynia 20–30: Poland’s Gateway to the World.”
3–6 August 2021: The 33rd Conference of the International Association of Scandinavian Studies (IASS), Vilnius University, Lithuania [online]. Paper delivered: “The journey of ‘Fram’. Case study of a Paraguayan colony: from place of memory to place of forgetting.”
25–27 May 2021: Border Seminar: “(Re)thinking border studies/communication across borders.” International seminar, University of Gdańsk [online]. Paper delivered: “Fitting within borders. The interwar Polish colonial plans as and aspiration of civilisational advancement”.
20–24 April 2021: British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) Regional Conference & Leibniz Science Campus “Eastern Europe – Global Area” (EEGA) Annual Conference “Globalising Eastern Europe – New Perspectives on Transregional Entanglements” [online]. Paper delivered: “Catching up and escaping: The case of East-Central European colonialism”.
4–6 March 2021: “Escaping Kakania. Eastern European Travels in Colonial Southeast Asia”. International workshop, National University of Singapore [online]. Paper delivered: “Indochina’s deadly sun. Polish Maritime and Colonial League’s depictions of Southeast Asia”.
23–26 November 2019: 51st Annual ASEEES Convention. San Francisco, USA. Roundtable: “Colonialism and Transnational Histories of East Central Europe”.
4–5 October 2019: “Social Change in Asia and Europe, part 2”. A conference organized by the Korea Foundation and Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN), Warsaw, Poland. Paper delivered: “Colonialism as aspiration: The colonial project of the Maritime and Colonial League”.
19–21 September 2019: “Reimagining Polish Wolrdwideness: Cross-Local Encounter and Global Arrangements International Conference”. International conference, Marburg, Germany. Paper delivered: “‘Poles Were Among the First on the Wide and Far Ocean Waters’. 50th Anniversary of Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński’s Expedition to Cameroon and its Use for Reimagining Polish Worldwideness in the Interwar Period”.
27–29 June 2019: World History Association’s 28th Annual Conference. San Juan, Puerto Rico. Paper delivered: “Window to the world: The port city of Gdynia and Polish global ambitions in the interwar period”.
9–10 May 2019: “Empire and Globalisation(s). Circulations, exchanges and trans-imperial Cooperation in Africa, 19th–20th century”. International workshop, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Paper delivered: “Poland and Trans-Imperial Cooperation in Africa in the Interwar Period”.
24–27April 2019: Western Social Science Association 61st Annual Conference. San Diego, USA. Paper delivered: “Imperial Aspirations: The Colonial Discourse in Interwar Poland”.
28–30 November 2018: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies Annual Conference: “Contested Europes: Legacies, Legitimacies, and (Dis)Integration – Baltic, Eastern and Central European perspectives”. Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Paper delivered: “Reforging the Polish psyche. Interwar Poland’s colonial aspirations as a modernization project”.
7–10 August 2018: “Scandinavian Exceptionalisms”. The 32nd Conference of the International Association of Scandinavian Studies (IASS), University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Paper delivered: “Questioning Scandinavian exceptionalism: The Polish Baltic Institute and its idea of Scandinavian-Baltic cooperation”.
14–16 May 2018: “The Drammar* of Culture and Nature. Relations Between Poland and the North”. University of Gdańsk, Poland. Paper delivered: “Background characters? The Nordic region and European colonialism”.
23–24 November 2017: ‘The Production of Imperial Space. Empire and Circulations (18th–20th Centuries)’. Centre d’Histoire SciencesPo, Paris, France. Paper delivered: ‘Aspirations of an imperial space. The colonial discourse of the Maritime and Colonial League in interwar Poland’.
9–10 November 2017: ‘Myśleć globalnie, działać regionalnie: Studia regionalne w perspektywie nauki o stosunkach międzynarodowych’. 7th Congress of the Polish Association on International Studies, Jagiellon University, Cracow, Poland. Paper delivered: ‘History and region-building in the Baltic Sea Region’.
28–29 September 2017: ‘Scandinavia through Sunglasses. Spaces of Cultural Exchange between Southern/Southeastern Europe and Nordic Countries’. University of Oslo, Norway. Paper delivered: ‘A view from the southern shore: Poland and Scandinavian-Baltic cooperation in the interwar period’.
3–5 May 2017: ‘Unjust Borderlands: Injustice and Cultural Bordering’, University of Greifswald, Germany. Paper delivered: ‘“History speaks for us here”. The new Polish-German border as abolition of an unjust borderland in the Polish historiography in the aftermath of the Second World War’.
1–2 December 2016: Centre for Baltic and East European Studies Annual Conference, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden. Paper delivered: ‘Space of failed expectations? Region-building in the Baltic Sea Region after the end of the Cold War’.
20–22 September 2016: ‘The Collapse of Memory – Memory of Collapse: Remembering the Past, Re-Constructing the Future in Periods of Crisis’, University of Lund, Sweden. Session discussant: ‘Disastrous Memory in Media’s Res’.
10 June 2016, ‘Baltic-Nordic Regionalism: A History of Regional Cooperation and Reconfiguration’. International research seminar, Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, UK. Paper delivered: ‘Poland and the Baltic-Nordic regionalism in the twentieth century’.
26–28 May 2016: ‘Global, glocal, and local: distinction and interconnection in the Baltic States’. 25th Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies Conference on Baltic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. Roundtable: ‘Returning geopolitics and past futures of Baltic-Nordic regionalism: Resilience or marginalization?’
30 March–2 April 2016: European Social Science History Conference, Valencia, Spain. Session discussant: ‘Maritime Areas: Spaces of Changing Expectations’.
25–26 September 2015: ‘Interactive Borderland? Re-thinking Networks and Organisations in Europe’. Annual IRTG Conference, Goethe Institut, Riga, Latvia. Delivering concluding remarks.
7–10 September 2015: ‘Traditions, transitions, transfers’. 11th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East-Central Europe, Marburg, Germany. Paper delivered: ‘Territories in transition: The use of history in the creation of identity on the post-Second World War Polish-German border’.
15–18 July 2015: ‘Knowledge Transfer and Cultural Exchanges’. II CHAM International Conference, FCSH/Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal. Paper delivered: ‘The challenging absence. The transfer of ideas in and about the Baltic Sea region after the end of the Cold War’.
1–4 June 2015: Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada Annual Conference 2015, University of Ottawa, Canada. Paper delivered: ‘Across the sea: Sweden and its Baltic Sea neighbours in the twentieth century’.
19–21 October 2014: ‘Bordering the Monster? “Creative Destruction” and De- and Re-Bordering of Established Structures/Borders’. Annual IRTG Conference, Umeå, Sweden. Paper delivered: ‘Ten centuries of struggling with the monster: the Germans as the Other in the post-Second World War Polish historiography’.
17–21 September 2014: XIX Powszechny Zjazd Historyków Polskich, Szczecin, Poland. Paper delivered: ‘Shaping the Baltic discourse in Poland: The Baltic Institute’.
8–10 May 2014: Svenska historikermötet, Stockholm University, Sweden. Paper delivered: ‘The Polish Baltic Institute’s view on the Nordic and Baltic Sea cooperation in the interwar period’.
5–7 April 2014: British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Annual Conference, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, UK. Paper delivered: ‘“Recovering” Territories: The use of history in the integration of the new Polish western borderland after the Second World War’.
13–15 March 2014: Yale Conference on Baltic and Scandinavian Studies, Yale University, New Haven, USA. Paper delivered: ‘The Polish Baltic Institute’s view on the Nordic and Baltic Sea cooperation in the interwar period’.
24–26 May 2013: ‘Empire-Building and Region-Building in the Baltic, North and Black Sea Areas’. The Fourth International Conference on Nordic and Baltic Studies in Romania, Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania. Paper delivered: ‘Intermarium: The Baltic and the Black Seas on the Polish mental maps in the interwar period’.
24–26 April 2013: ‘Migration and cultural encounters in the Baltic Sea Region’, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden. Paper delivered: ‘Ethnicity and ideology: Population movements in the region of Pomerania in the historiography of post-war Poland’.
20–22 September 2012: ‘Beyond the Sea. Reviewing the manifold dimensions of water as barrier and bridge’, University of Greifswald, Germany. Paper delivered: ‘From moat to connecting link: The image of the Baltic Sea in Sweden in the twentieth century’.
28–29 September 2011: ‘Shared Past – Conflicting Histories Symposium. Historical Knowledge, Memory and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region’, University of Turku, Finland. Paper delivered: ‘The struggle over Pomerania. Polish research on Pomerania, the Polish Corridor and the Baltic Sea in the interwar period’.
22–24 October 2009: ‘Recasting the Peaceful Revolution of ’89. Roots and Legacies’, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden. Paper delivered: ‘History awakened to life: The historiography of the Baltic Sea region after the end of the Cold War’.
18–20 June 2009: Concluding seminar: ‘Building on the Past. European Doctorate in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean’, Schule für Historische Forschung, University of Bielefeld, Germany. Paper delivered: ‘The concept of the Baltic Sea region as a historical region: The analysis of the process of constructing narratives about the region’s past’.
18–20 September 2008: Introductory Seminar: ‘Building on the Past. European Doctorate in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean’, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia. Paper delivered: ‘The concept of the Baltic Sea region as a historical region: The analysis of the process of constructing narratives about the region’s past’.
26–29 June 2008: Seventeenth Annual World History Association Conference, Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Paper delivered: ‘History awakened to life: The historiography of the Baltic Sea Region after the end of the Cold War’.
29 February–1 March 2008: ‘The “Baltic Frontier” Revisited. Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Baltic Sea Region’, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Paper delivered: ‘Shaping the image of the Baltic Sea region in the Polish consciousness: The Polish Baltic Institute’.
