Anita Prazmowska

Biography

Professor Anita Prazmowska studied for her undergraduate degree at the University of Birmingham before moving to Queen Mary College where she studied for her PhD. Her academic career began at the University of Strathclyde before moving back to London to teach at Queen Mary and Westfield. She joined the LSE as a Lecturer in 1992.

Professor Prazmowska's main fields of research interests lie in the Cold War; communism; contemporary history; Eastern Europe; fascism; and Poland.

Professor Prazmowska has on several occasion received British Academy grants to pursue research relating to her three monographs (Eastern Front, Betrayed Ally and the Civil war).

She was also the recipient of grants from The Nuffield Foundation, awarded in April 1993; The British Academy, awarded in May 1993; The Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economic and Related Disciplines, awarded in December 1998. There were funds for research into the Origins of Communism in Poland. The result has been the recently published book entitled Civil War in Poland 1943-48, printed by Macmillan in 2004 and two refereed articles and two chapters in edited books.

Most recently she was awarded a two-year Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, 2016-18. The topic of her research will be ‘The Cold War Jigsaw: Poland's role in the Angolan Civil War, 1976-1986’.

The main focus of her current research is Polish de-Stalinisation and the events of 1956. Part of this research was published in Wladyslaw Gomulka. A Biography (2015), part of the  Communist Lives series from I.B. Tauris.

Courses

Professor Prazmowska usually teaches the following courses:

At undergraduate level:

• HY232: War, Genocide and Nation Building. The History of South-Eastern Europe 1914-1990

At postgraduate level:

• HY434 The Rise and Fall of Communism in Europe, 1917-1990

Publications

Recent publications by Professor Anita Prazmowska include:

• "'Frenchmen' in Polish Mines: The Politics of Productivity in Coal Mining in Poland 1946-1948", Europe-Asia Studies, 70:2, pp. 230-251 (2018);
• Wladyslaw Gomulka. A Biography (I.B. Tauris, 2015);
• Poland. A Modern History (I.B. Tauris, 2010);
• 'Ignacy Paderewski. Poland', in Makers of the Modern World. The peace conferences of 1919-23 and their aftermath (Haus Histories, 2009);
• Civil War in Poland, (Macmillan Press, 2004);
• A History of Poland, (Macmillan Press, 2004);
• Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Second World War, (Macmillan Press, 2000);
• Britain and Poland 1939-1943. The betrayed ally, (Cambridge University Press, 1995);
• Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939, (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

She has also made contributions in recent years to:

• 'The experience of occupation: Poland' in John Bourne, Peter Liddle, Ian Whitehead (eds.), The Great World War, 1914-45, Vol. I. Lightening Strikes Twice, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2000)
• 'Poland' in The Origins of the World War Two. The Debate Continues, Robert Boyce, and Joseph A.Maiolo, (Palgrave/Macmillan Press, 2003).