Simon Coll (UCL) - 2014-15 Students
simon.coll.13@ucl.ac.uk

Social Perspectives on Nationalism, Normalization and East German-Polish Relations, 1949-1989

My project aims to explore the interaction between official discourses of nationalism and normalization/reconciliation in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and People’s Poland. Using a combination of oral and archival research methods, applied in a series of micro-studies in Germany and Poland, I hope to investigate how these official discourses were received by the populace in both states, how their interaction shaped East German-Polish relations on a popular level, and how this ‘Cold War in the Soviet bloc’ (in Sheldon Anderson’s formulation) relates to the broader account of postwar German-Polish relations.