Martin Gumiela was a Researcher with RECET in 2022–2025.

Martin Gumiela is an affiliated research fellow at the Center for Business History at Kozminski University Warsaw (since 2026). He is also a research associate in the research project 'A Breach in the System: The Polonia Firms 1976-1994' (Austrian Science Fund/National Science Center Poland-NCN) and member of the organisational committee of the Workshop on Business History in CEE (WBHCEE). From March 2024 to August 2025, he was Scientific Coordinator of the Research Platform for the Study of Transformations and Eastern Europe (University of Vienna).

In his dissertation Martin Gumiela explores Austrian Polonia firms in late state socialist Poland, i.e. small and medium sized private enterprises in People's Poland that were founded and led by members of the Polish diaspora from Austria. His main research interests lie in the social, economic and environmental history of ECE in the 20th century.

Current research project

"With Capital Participation from People's Poland. Polish »Ostfirmen« in Vienna during the Cold War"

This short-term research project examines a handful of private companies operating in Vienna that were founded with various forms of capital participation from People's Poland. These companies served as outposts for Polish cross-bloc trade, were intended to find new sales markets in the West, and generate long-term profits in hard currency. Researching these companies thus sheds light on (significantly rarer) cross-bloc FDI from East to West during the Cold War and the business activities of a state-socialist country in the West.

The project is funded by the City of Vienna's "Hochschuljubiläumsfonds".

Selected publications

Edited volumes: 

• Adrian Brisku, Martin Gumiela, Lars Fredrik Stöcker: Varieties of Economic Nationalism in Cold War Europe: Small State Responses to Economic Changes, 1960s to 1980s (Bloomsbury Academic, London 2025).

Articles in journals (peer-reviewed):

• Im Sog interner Ermittlungen: „Geliebte von Banditen“ und die fehlende Wachsamkeit eines Offiziers des Sicherheitsamtes im stalinistischen Polen, in: Journal of East Central European Studies 72/4 (2023), 569–594.
• Erzwungene Neutralität? (Deutsch-)Österreichs Verhältnis zu Polen während des Polnisch-Sowjetischen Krieges 1919–1921, in: Zeitgeschichte 50/1 (2023), 119–140.

Chapters in edited volumes (peer-reviewed):

• Business as usual? Prywatne firmy z udziałem kapitału zagranicznego w socjalistycznej Polsce w okresie stanu wojennego (1981–1983), in: Jerzy Kochanowski, Lars Fredrik Stöcker (eds.), Wyłom w Systemie. Firmy Polonijne w PRL (Scholar, Warszawa 2025), 101–127.
• National in content and … pragmatic in practice: People’s Poland’s economic relations with the Western Polish diaspora in the 1970s and 1980s. In: Varieties of Economic Nationalism in Cold War Europe: Small State Responses to Economic Changes, 1960s to 1980s, edited by Adrian Brisku, Martin Gumiela and Lars Fredrik Stöcker (Bloomsbury Academic, London 2025), 153-176.
• Początki Komunistycznej Partii (Niemieckiej) Austrii oraz jej działalność w obliczu Wojny Polsko-Bolszewickiej, in: Elżbieta Kowalczyk, Konrad Rokicki (Eds.), 1920 Rok – Wojna Światów. Tom 2. Europa wobec Wojny Polsko-Bolszewickiej (Warszawa 2023), 409–430.
•  “Całe życie walczyłem o wyzwolenie klasy robotniczej” – próba analizy partykularnej koncepcji moralności wysokich funkcjonariuszy MBP oraz jej genezy, in: Robert Klementowski, Kamila Mikołajczyk, Jarosław Syrnyk (Eds.), Aparat Bezpieczeństwa w perspektywie antropologii organizacji i antropologii władzy (Wrocław - Warszawa 2020), 66–83.
• Krwawe i przebiegłę? Kobiety władzy w wybranych państwach socjalistycznych, in: Karolina Białas, Katarzyna Jóźwik, Kalina Słaboszewska (Eds.), Kobiety i Władza (Warsaw University Press 2019), 114–126.