Shipbuilding between State Socialism and the European Union. A Polish (and Croatian) Case

The seminar will be held on 5 May at 9:30 am (CET) via Zoom and is open to wide public. 

 Link for registration: https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/.../regi.../fJP4LbeJRrew8PUzS1HvaQ . You will be directed to the waiting room and we will accept you once the speaker is ready.

Please find the seminar description and the speaker's biography below. 

Shipbuilding between State Socialism and the European Union. A Polish (and Croatian) Case

#5 MEPOST seminar description:

Piotr Filipkowski's presentation is based on the recently published book In the Storms of Transformation. Two Shipyards between Socialism and the EU (University of Toronto Press, 2024; German edition 2022; Polish edition 2025) co-authored by Philipp Ther, Ulf Brunnbauer, Piotr Filipkowski, Stephano Petrungaro, Peter Wegenschimmel and Andrew Hodges. The volume concludes the research project “Transformations from Below. Shipyards and Labor Relations in the Uljanik (Croatia) and Gdynia (Poland) Shipyards since the 1980s,” carried out jointly by the Institute for East European History at the University of Vienna and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in years 2016-2020. It brings together perspectives from oral history, historical anthropology, and (micro-)enterprise history, situating them within the broader framework of the global economy.

The account of the transformation of the shipyards in Gdynia and Pula begins in the mid-1970s, at the height of both enterprises’ prosperity, and concludes with their respective closures in 2009 and 2018—several years after the accession of Poland and subsequently Croatia to the European Union, a development that had a direct impact on state policy in this sector. This unconventional periodization, together with the choice of shipyards as the primary objects of analysis, makes it possible to link transformations in local worlds of work (and life) in this part of Europe with the global shipbuilding market and international maritime trade. It also raises the question of the role of the state—and its limitations—in shaping industrial policy.

Many shipyard workers from Gdynia continue to seek an answer to the question of why their shipyard collapsed. The book demonstrates that an equally pertinent question is why it endured for so long, while at the same time challenging a deterministic interpretation that would present such an outcome as inevitable.

Short biography 

Dr Piotr Filipkowski is a sociologist, oral historian, assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is engaged in various historical and sociological research projects devoted to biographical experiences and memories of the war, socialist modernization, and capitalist transformation in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Filipkowski is the author of a monograph "Oral History and the War. Concentration Camp Experience in Biographical-Narrative Perspective" (Wrocław 2010, Berlin 2019, Vienna 2024), where he analyzes interviews with Polish survivors of the Nazi camps during World War II. He is the co-author of the book In the Storms of Transformation: Two Shipyards between Socialism and the EU (Berlin 2022, Toronto 2025) and author of numerous articles on theory and methodology of oral history and biographical research.