Kamil Karczewski

Past and Present Fellow 2022-24

Kamil is a historian of sexuality specialising in LGBTQ+ history with a particular focus on nationalism, queer migrations, and sexual subjectivity in European regions traditionally considered peripheral. Kamil also explores new ways of learning, teaching, and popularising (queer) history research through digital tools.

Kamil's Research

Kamil’s research

As a Past and Present Fellow, Kamil is transforming his PhD dissertation, ‘Sex in the Times of Nationalism: Queerness and Poland, 1918–1939’, into a book. The work will offer a new narrative in social history of interwar Europe, highlighting the profound influence that nationalism wielded over queer people at the time when homosexual subjectivities were only emerging. The book will also uncover a previously undocumented richness of queer communities throughout interwar Poland.

Kamil’s second research project, ‘Queers on the Move’, examines the global migrations of queer individuals from Eastern Europe before and during World War II. Currently, Kamil focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ+ immigrants who arrived in the United Kingdom prior to 1950.

Kamil completed his PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. Previously he was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, and the Leibnitz Institute of European History in Mainz. He is also Honorary Research Fellow at the Research Centre for LGBT+ History and Identities at the University of Warsaw.

Publications

• Karczewski, K. (2022). “Call Me by My Name:” A “Strange and Incomprehensible” Passion in the Polish Kresy of the 1920s. Slavic Review, 81(3), 631-652. doi:10.1017/slr.2022.224

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/call-me-by-my-name-a-strange-and-incomprehensible-passion-in-the-polish-kresy-of-the-1920s/F59AF96A9D6DE69F7160CB364F4A68E2?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=bookmark#article

• Karczewski, K. (2022). Transnational Flows of Knowledge and the Legalisation of Homosexuality in Interwar Poland. Contemporary European History, 1-18. doi:10.1017/S0960777322000108

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/transnational-flows-of-knowledge-and-the-legalisation-of-homosexuality-in-interwar-poland/0AA8E62A831D45F170F0282D1A7E9B1B#article

• Karczewski, K. (forthcoming). ‘“For a Pole, It All Was a Great Abomination”. Grassroots Homonationalism and State Homophobia à la Polonaise: A History Lesson from a Place between East and West’, Sexuality & Culture.

• Karczewski, K. (forthcoming). ‘Homosexuality in Interwar Poland’, in Anita Kurimay et al., Handbook on Sexuality in Central Eastern Europe, Routledge.