Department of Late Modern History of Poland

The Department of Late Modern History of Poland was established by the Scientific Council of the Institute of History of the University of Gdańsk on May 16, 1997. Its first head was prof. dr hab. Marian Mroczko. Since 2004, it has been headed by prof. dr hab. Eugeniusz Koko, and currently it includes: Assoc. Prof., dr hab. Magdalena Nowak, Prof. dr hab. Igor Hałagida and Assoc. Prof., dr hab. Piotr Perkowski.

Prof. M. Nowak focuses her studies on Polish-Ukrainian relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. She has devoted two important monographs to this problem: concerning the attitude of the National Democracy towards the Ukrainian minority in the interwar years and the the issue of national identification of the Archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church, Andrei Sheptyts’kyi. The second of those books is currently being translated into Ukrainian and is to be published in Ukraine 2021.

Prof. I. Hałagida in his research also included issues related to Polish-Ukrainian relations. These issues were dealt with in his works on the Ukrainian minority and the Greek Catholic Church in Poland after 1945. In his other publications he also raised issues related to social history, the history of the repression apparatus and the democratic opposition in Polish People's Pepublic.

Prof. Piotr Perkowski deals with the social history of Poland after 1945, especially the history of post-war Gdańsk. He is also a co-author of a monograph on women in the Polish People's Republic. He is currently working on a monograph entitled "Communism, Solidarity and the Crisis of Modernity", analysing the relationships between global processes of the so-called late modernity, the phenomenon of Solidarity and the fall of communism in Poland.

Prof. E. Koko focuses on issues related to Polish political thought on the Ukrainian issue (until 1939). He has also dealt with the history of local communities in Gdańsk Pomerania (Kartuzy, Żukowo, Sieraków) during the Polish People's Republic.