Tomasz Kamusella

Tomasz Kamusella (born in 1967, in Kędzierzyn, Upper Silesia, Poland) is a European scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity.

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Education

He was educated at the University of Silesia, Sosnowiec Campus, Poland; Potchefstroom University (now part of the North-West University), Potchefstroom, South Africa; and the Central European University (co-accredited then by the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom), Prague Campus, Czech Republic. He obtained his doctorate in Political Science from the Institute of Western Affairs (Instytut Zachodni), Poznań, Poland.

Academic career

In 1994/95 he taught in the Language Teachers’ Training College (Nauczycielskie Kolegium Języków Obcych), Opole, Poland. Since 1995 he has been employed at the University of Opole, Opole, Poland. From 2002-2006, he did his postdoctoral research in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy; the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., United States; the Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM)), Vienna, Austria; and the Herder-Institut, Marburg, Germany. As visiting professor, in 2007-10, he teaches Central and Eastern European History and Polish History and Politics in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Thanks to the support of the Centre international de formation européenne, Nice, France (then headed by Ferdinand Kinsky de:Ferdinand Graf Kinsky, under whose supervision T. Kamusella had written his master’s thesis in Prague), he founded, and between 1999 and 2002, co-organized the International Summer School (Międzynarodowa Szkoła Letnia, Opole, Poland) on European integration and minorities in the Opole Voivodeship. Uniquely, then this school was co-financed by NATO, and today it continues to be organized on the annual basis by the Dom Europejski (European House), Opole, Poland. He applied with the European Commission’s Jean Monnet Programme for a European Module in History and Politics of the European Union, and from 1997-2002, he led this module at the University of Opole. He also conceived the project Specific Nationalisms for the Polish Academy of Sciences’ half-annual Sprawy Narodowościowe (Nationalities Affairs), in the framework of which, since 2001 he has attracted high quality English-language articles for this journal.[1] In 2008, he founded and co-edits the book series, Nationalisms Across the Globe, published by Peter Lang Ireland.

In 2005-07, he provided academic expertise for Andrzej Roczniok and Grzegorz Kozubek’s application for an ISO 639-3 code for the Silesian language, which was granted in 1997: szl. Likewise, in 2008 he wrote an opinion on the incubator Silesian Wikipedia, which led to its launching, as Ślůnsko Wikipedyjo, in the same year.[2] On June 30, 2008, on the first-ever codification (linguistics) conference on Silesian (Ślōnsko godka – mundart jeszcze eli już jednak szpracha? [The Silesian Language: A Mundart* or Already a Language?]), as the sole one of the four main panelists unambiguously supported its recognition as a language in Poland. He argues that the will of 60,000 persons, who indicated Silesian as their language of everyday communication in the Polish census of 2002, could not be disregarded in any democratic state.[3]

Career in Civil Service

In 1996 he was employed as the, first-ever in Poland, regional Plenipotentiary on European Integration to the Regional Governor (Pełnomocnik Wojewody ds. Integracji Europejskiej) in the Regional Authority (Urząd Wojewódzki), Opole. Later, from 1999-2002, he acted as Advisor on International Affairs to the Regional President (Doradca Marszałka ds. Współpracy z Zagranicą), Self-Governmental Regional Authority (Urząd Marszałkowski), Opole. In cooperation with the University of Opole, between 1997 and 2001, he managed the application in the Council of Europe, and financing that led to the establishment of the European Documentation Center in Opole [1]. This center makes acquis communautaire available to the inhabitants of the Voivodeship of Opole and constituted a basis for founding a Department of Law at the University of Opole. In 1998, in the framework of the European Visitors Program of the European Union, he also visited the Spanish Autonomous Community of Galicia, which, in the following year, led to the signing of the cooperation agreement between this Spanish region and the Opole Voivodeship.<[4]>

Books in English

Edited Volumes in English

Books in Polish

Significant Articles

References

  1. ^ W J Burszta. 2003. Od Redakcji [Editorial]. Sprawy Narodowościowe. Vol. 22, pp. 9-10.
  2. ^ http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Powsta%C5%82a_%C5%9Al%C4%85ska_Wikipedia, http://szl.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Al%C5%AFnsko_Wikipedyjo
  3. ^ http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Katowice:_konferencja_dotycz%C4%85ca_statusu_%C5%9Bl%C4%85skiej_mowy
  4. ^ >http://umwo.opole.pl/docs/porozumienie_galicja.pdf<

External links