Professor of history. His research focuses on post-1945 German and Polish history. His first monograph, “The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970” examines how, amid the charged political context of the early Cold War, millions of West Germans expelled from the province of Silesia after World War II came to recognise that physical return was not possible. A fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His third monograph, “Three Cities after Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction across Cold War Borders” measures the politics of memory in urban reconstruction under three contrasting regime ideologies haunted by the recent Nazi past. His latest book, “Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany” measures how catastrophic urban decay helped to prompt dynamic interplay between residents, local officials, and central authorities over the decade before the Leipzigers spearheaded the revolution that ended East German communism in 1989. Professor Demshuk specialises in courses relating to twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe, with close attention to nationalism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, urban planning and memory, and the broader effects of mid-20th-century forced migration on the world we inhabit today.