Ulf Brunnbauer is a historian specializing in Southeast and Eastern Europe. After completing his PhD at the University of Graz in 1999, he joined the Institute for East European Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, where he earned his habilitation in 2006 with a study on social policy in communist Bulgaria. Since 2008, he has held the Chair of Southeast and Eastern European History at the University of Regensburg and serves as Academic Director of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies. His research focuses on migration, labor, social structures, nation-building, and the transnational dimensions of Southeast Europe’s history.