Laurie Koloski

Laurie Koloski traveled to Poland for the first time in 1981, knowing little about the country and maybe a dozen words of the language. It didn’t take long to realize what a special place it was, and she lived there for four years before returning to the US to complete her undergraduate studies. She has been traveling to and studying central and eastern Europe ever since.

Recently retired from William & Mary’s Department of History, Laurie received degrees from the University of Michigan, Yale University, and Stanford University, as well as certificates from the Center for Polish Language and Culture in the World at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. While her training and research focused on social and cultural history in communist-era Poland, her teaching interests have encompassed modern European and global history, communism and socialism, historical interpretation, and material culture. Her favorite course at W&M was “Stuff: Objects and Their (Hi)Stories,” in which she worked with first-year students to read material objects and critically evaluate the past and present-day stories of their favorite (and sometimes least favorite) things.

Laurie uses case studies to highlight key historical themes and lessons, often by focusing on the ways that things such as monuments, maps, food, buildings, and even mustaches can help us understand broad developments such as identity, imperial power, and ideology. She has enjoyed traveling with Smithsonian Journeys tours since 2016 and is always eager to meander back streets with her fellow travelers, looking for that little café, shop, or street sign that has a larger story to tell.

Alexander J. Motyl

Alexander J. Motyl (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1984) is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. He served as associate director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in 1992-1998 and of the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers in 1999-2009; he has taught at Harvard, Lehigh, and Kyiv Mohyla Universities and lectured throughout Europe. Trained as a Sovietologist and East Europeanist, he has expanded his research interests to Western and Central Europe, especially with respect to the historical development of nations and nationalism, the rise and fall of empires, and the causes and consequences of revolutions. He is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs and is the author of seven academic books, nine novels, and two collections of poetry; also a painter, Motyl has exhibited in solo and group shows in New York, Philadelphia, and Toronto. Learn more about Alexander Motyl at alexmotyl.com.

Tim Blanning

Tim Blanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1990, Tim has published extensively on the political and cultural history of Europe in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Among his publications are The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture (2002), The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (2007), The Triumph of Music (2008) and The Romantic Revolution (2010).  Tim's books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Croatian and Arabic. His most recent book is a best-selling and prize-winning biography of Frederick the Great King of Prussia, published by Penguin/Random House. For his current project on the exciting if notorious Augustus ‘the Strong’ of Saxony and Poland he has expanded his area of expertise to include the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe.