Education
- Ph.D. in History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick (NJ, USA)
- M.A. in History, CUNY Graduate Center & CCNY
- B.A. in History, Queens College, CUNY
Research Interests
- Border Studies, Partition, Nationalism, Forced Migration, Identity Politics
- Colonialism, Religion and Politics
- Historical Culture and History Education
- Transnational and Comparative History
- Central Europe, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia (20th century)
Biography
Dr. Peter (Ibrahim) Polak Springer is a historian specializing in border studies, transnational and comparative history, and cultural history. His research focuses on partition, nationalism, forced migration, historical culture, and history education, particularly in the contexts of Central Europe and the Middle East from 1918 to the present. He explores themes such as identity politics in contested borderlands, nationalism in sacred spaces, and the transnational transmission of colonial frameworks into the Middle East and South Asia.
His monograph offers a transnational cultural and political history of Upper Silesia—a region contested between Poland and Germany between 1918 and 1989—focusing on how nationalism, cultural politics, and historical memory shaped partition, migration, youth activism, and urban landscapes. His comparative research also examines border disputes and identity politics in Qatar, the Arabian Gulf, and Mandatory Palestine as part of broader transimperial dynamics.
Dr. Springer’s latest work investigates national history narratives and textbook representations of European history across the Arab world, especially in the Gulf states. He has taught extensively on European history, nationalism, the Arabian Gulf, intellectual history, and political geography, and held academic affiliations with institutions including Freie Universität Berlin, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Rutgers University, Qatar University, the University of Silesia, and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
He has published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Borderlands Studies, Contemporary European History, and Central European History. His work has been supported by the ACLS, Mellon Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, and SSRC.
Selected Publications
Book
- Recovered Territory: A German-Polish Conflict Over Land and Culture, 1919–1989. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015.
Recent Articles
- “Between Empires: Narratives of Qatar’s Battle of Wajba in Ottoman and British Archival Records and the Qatari Master Narrative.” Journal of Arabian Studies (forthcoming).
- “Bordering Zubara: Oil Politics, the 1937 Qatari-Bahraini Conflict, and the Making of a Modern Arabian Gulf Borderland.” Journal of Borderlands Studies, 37:5 (2022).
- “Gain Weight, Have Fun, Discover the Fatherland: German-Polish Summer Youth Exchange and Interwar Irredentism.” Contemporary European History, 30:2 (2021).
Book Chapters
- “‘Jihad against the Jews’: Anti-Semitism in Interwar Eastern Europe in the Eyes of the Arab Press of Mandatory Palestine.” In Mobility Dynamics between Eastern Europe and the Near East. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2024.
Grants & Fellowships
- ACLS-Mellon Recent Doctoral Recipients Fellowship
- Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship
- SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship
- Berlin Program Fellowship, Freie Universität Berlin
Languages
- English
- Polish
- German
- Arabic
Teaching Experience
- University of Silesia: Twentieth-Century Social History, Islamophobia & Multiculturalism, Political Geography
- Qatar University: History of Qatar & the Gulf, Europe and the World, Nationalism, Intellectual History, Introduction to History, Capstone
- Rutgers University & Europa-Universität Viadrina: European History, Political Thought, Academic Writing
Media Contributions
- Interviewed by Al Jazeera, Al-Arabi TV, and Al-Rayyan Channel on history, partition, and cultural heritage in the Middle East
