The Postcolonial Challenge: Connecting Disciplines and Bridging Debates

In recent years, the postcolonial perspective has increasingly influenced the study of East Central European history, prompting new ways of understanding social, cultural and political entanglements with imperialism, colonialism and racialized structures of domination. Traditionally examined through the lens of nationalism and totalitarianism, scholars are now exploring East Central Europe in relation to global practices of expansion, violence, settlement, resistance and decolonization, as well as the experiences of marginalized and minority groups.

Focusing on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany’s annexation of Polish territory during the Second World War, this lecture examines how postcolonial approaches offer new perspectives that move beyond Eurocentric narratives and engage with transnational and comparative methodologies. It highlights both the possibilities and the challenges—particularly in light of recent heated public debates—of applying postcolonial perspectives to regions that were and are not traditionally viewed as typical colonies yet, simultaneously, not fully exempt from being imagined and treated as such.

Dr. Rachel O’Sullivan is an Irish historian and a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. She earned her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. Her book, Nazi Germany, Annexed Poland, and Colonial Rule: Resettlement, Germanization, and Population Policies in Comparative Perspective (published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023), focuses on analyzing annexed Poland and Nazi population policies through the lens of colonialism. Currently, she is researching cultural genocide and the Holocaust.

A representative IPSOS study, commissioned last year by the Pilecki Institute Berlin and covered by various news outlets, revealed prevailing stereotypes and knowledge gaps in German society regarding the history and present of Poland, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe. This prompted us to organize a conference on (P)ostcolonialism: Postcolonial Perspectives on Poland, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, along with an accompanying scholarship program, the results of which will now be presented. Given the considerable interest and attention last year´s conference received—and the frequent hope expressed by participants that it would not be a one-off event—we are back with another edition in this series.