dr hab. Piotr Perkowski, prof. UG

About me:

I am a social historian at the University of Gdansk, working on issues of social and economic history of Poland in the second half of the 20th century. So far I have published two books - on post-war Gdansk and (co-authored) on women in socialist Poland, as well as papers in international outlets. In recent years, political economy, supplemented by elements of social history, has helped me to better understand the structural transformation of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. My latest book, Communism, Shipyards and the Crisis of Modernity: The Political Economy of Late Socialism in Poland, under contract with Routledge, navigates the era from Gierek to Jaruzelski, exploring the interplay between a command economy, societal pressures and post-Bretton-Woods global dynamics. Drawing on extensive archival sources, it unfolds the narrative of socialist Poland as it grappled with successive reform failures, sovereign debt, social unrest and the emergence of Solidarity. Focusing on the shipbuilding industry, it shows how the export-oriented sector navigated global capitalist trends and crises, and examines the impact of market-socialist policies on the workshop floors of the port city.

Research interests:

Communism, East Central Europe, political economy, social history, shipbuilding industry, Solidarity movement, history of Gdańsk, women's history.

Selected publications:

Communism, Shipyards and the Crisis of Modernity: The Political Economy of Late Socialism in Poland, under contract with Routledge.

“Modernization through Japanization? The Japanese system and state-socialist Poland’s economic reform”, The International History Review (2024, online first).

“Between Solid and Liquid Experience in a Socialist Port: Gdańsk Shipyard Workers at the turn of the 1980s”, International Journal of Maritime History 33, issue 1 (2021): 162–77.

Kobiety w Polsce 1945–1989: Nowoczesność – równouprawnienie – komunizm (Kraków: Universitas, 2020), pp. 520 (with Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz, Małgorzata Fidelis, and Barbara Klich-Kluczewska). Translation in progress, under contract with CEU Press.

Gdańsk – miasto od nowa: Kształtowanie społeczeństwa i warunki bytowe w latach 1945–1970 (Gdańsk: Fundacja Terytoria Książki, 2020, 2nd ed., expanded), pp. 660.

“Wedded to Welfare? Working Mothers and the Welfare State in Communist Poland”, Slavic Review 76, no. 2 (2017): 455–80.

Recent research projects: 

2018–2021: “Komunizm, Solidarność i kryzys nowoczesności”, Narodowe Centrum Nauki

2013–2016: “Kobiety w Polsce 1944–1989”, Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki, MNiSW, project in cooperation with Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Jagiellonian University. 

Fellowships:

2024: Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg (Fellowship in Contemporary Urban History)