Webinar: Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine

  Join us for Webinar next Friday!

Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine

Friday 11 September 2026 · 16:00 Kyiv / 15:00 Berlin / 09:00 Bloomington · zoom

In this session, Prof. Dr. Marat Balyshev, Head of the Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine (TsDNTA), examines the work of his institution during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. The session is moderated by Dr. Ewa Sułek.

This lecture traces the changes across the archives’ principal areas of activity, driven by the need to safeguard documents, maintain institutional continuity, and widen access to archival information under wartime conditions. Particular attention is given to the development of digital archival resources: the digitisation of scientific and technical documentation, the creation of electronic catalogues and a collection of digital use copies, and the implementation of the TOPAZ information retrieval system. The lecture also outlines the international dimension of the archives’ work — cooperation with foreign archival, academic, and cultural institutions, participation in international projects and professional events, and the role of international charitable assistance in strengthening the institution’s material and technical capacity, acquiring modern digitisation equipment, and sustaining stable operations throughout the war.

A second focus falls on the archives’ cultural and educational projects. Drawing on two case studies — “Site of Resistance: Infrastructure Projects of the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant” and “Industrial Utopia: The Unrealised Project of the Kharkiv Nuclear Power Plant” — the lecture considers new approaches to using archival documents in exhibition, research, and public-facing work, including thematic web resources, documentary films, 3D models, and works of art created on the basis of archival holdings. It assesses how archival documentation can generate new forms of representing archival heritage: forms that invite a rethinking of Ukraine’s scientific and technical legacy, extend its presence in the public sphere, draw new audiences to the history of science, technology, and industry, and open fresh possibilities for communication between archives and society.

The lecture will be of interest to historians, archivists, researchers in the history of science and technology, students, and all those interested in Ukraine’s scientific, technical, and industrial heritage.

Every session runs with simultaneous Ukrainian–English interpretation — ask questions in either language — and ends with an open Q&A.

 Free · registration required

 Register for Webinar 2: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/C3XqTlTHQ3mV2fu-qdqRpw

The project is a part of the Lysiak-Rudnytsky Ukrainian Studies Programme held by the Ukrainian Institute in cooperation with the Cultural Diplomacy Foundation, with financial support from the International Renaissance Foundation and Mnozhyna Foundation.

See you next Friday, September 11!

Milan Hanyš: Mezi Prahou a Siónem Intelektuální portrét Felixe Weltsche. Centrum pro studium demokracie 2026 [Between Prague and Sion: An Intellectual Portrait of Felix Weltsch].

 Milan Hanyš: Mezi Prahou a Siónem Intelektuální portrét Felixe Weltsche. Centrum pro studium demokracie 2026 [Between Prague and Sion: An Intellectual Portrait of Felix Weltsch]. ISBN 978-80-7325-616-6

Felix Weltsch (1884-1964), filosof, publicista a šéfredaktor pražského sionistického týdeníku Selbstwehr, byl jednou z ústředních postav německo-židovského intelektuálního života v meziválečné Praze a blízkým přítelem Franze Kafky a Maxe Broda. Přes svůj kulturní a myšlenkový dosah zůstal v české recepci dosud stranou pozornosti.

Kniha rekonstruuje Weltschovo myšlení v celé jeho tematické šíři: od filosofických základů pražského sionismu a teorie národního humanismu přes politickou teorii obranyschopné demokracie a analýzu antisemitismu jako symptomu krize liberální společnosti až po reflexi holocaustu. Weltsch si kladl otázky, které neztratily nic ze své naléhavosti: Jak bránit demokracii před jejími nepřáteli? Jak smířit národní identitu s humanistickými hodnotami? Co antisemitismus vypovídá o většinové společnosti? Kniha vychází z rozsáhlého pramenného výzkumu a metod intelektuálních dějin. Součástí svazku je i antologie pěti Weltschových textů, které vycházejí v češtině poprvé.

GLOHRA workshop Mind the gap: engaging Europe’s East in global health debates

GLOHRA workshop Mind the gap: engaging Europe’s East in global health debates

Dates: October 29–30, 2026
Location: Charité, Berlin, Germany
Format: Hybrid (in-person or online participation)
Registration deadline: October 9, 2026

Capacity: Limited to 30 in-person participants; places allocated based on responses below  

Details: https://tinyurl.com/bdzjuf88

Confirmed speakers: Valentyna Mazhbits, Botakoz Kassymbekova, Daniel James, Dora Vargha, Bogdan Cristian Iacob, Petra Ezzeddine, Joanna Talewicz, Lois Orton, Olga Fuseini, and Dominika Pszczółkowska-Mościcka. The full programme will be published closer to the workshop date.

Participation, including catering during the event, is free of charge. Participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation.

The workshop is organised by Dr Tereza Hendl (University of Augsburg, the RUTA Association), Dr Joanna Karolina Malinowska (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, the RUTA Association), Professor Kerem Böge and Dr Solveig Kemna from the Charité, Berlin. The workshop is funded by the awarded grant from the German Alliance for Global Health research (GLOHRA).

CFP:Fish out of place: how animals shape infrastructure

 

ESEH 2027 Panel Proposal

We invite proposals for a panel to be submitted to the ESEH conference at Salzburg, 7 — 10 September 2027

Deadline for Proposals: 20 September 2026

 Fish out of place: how animals shape infrastructure

Hydraulic infrastructure, fishing vessels, hatcheries and fish ponds are usually studied as expressions of human ambition: to engineer environments and to manage fish populations. Less attention has been paid to the ways fish failed to behave as expected. They did not swim up fishways, did not spawn, avoided fishing gear, or simply failed to appear. As highly mobile animals, fish kept eluding the technical logic of engineers and fishers, of fisheries scientists, aquaculturists and water managers. Their movements limited what infrastructure could do, and prompted new efforts to adapt or redesign it. This panel explores the role of animals in infrastructural change through the lens of fish and other aquatic life. It brings together environmental history and the history of science and technology, and is open to European and non-European cases from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Please send a communication of interest along with a short abstract (200 words) to christian.zumbraegel@uni-bielefeld.de and anna.safronova@zmo.de  by 20 September 2026, so that we can build a coherent panel together.

 

Ruben Zeeman (ed.) Censorship and Self-Censorship in History Education: A Comparative Approach to Backsliding Democracies

Ruben Zeeman (ed.) Censorship and Self-Censorship in History Education: A Comparative Approach to Backsliding Democracies. CEU Press 2026. ISBN: 9789048577118

Censorship of history education takes place around the world. A striking feature of recent examples is that they often coincide with challenges to democratic governance. This book examines this interplay between censorship and self-censorship in history education and so-called democratic backsliding. It does so in two parts. The first brings together an interdisciplinary group of academics, high school teachers and human rights advocates to assess the characteristics of censorship and self-censorship in Brazil, India, Hungary and the United States. Their analyses move between local, national and transnational developments to capture the overlaps and differences between state and non-state censorial practices and strategies of resistance. The second, thematic part explores some of the formal characteristics of contemporary censorship of history education, including the impact of social media, continuities of colonialism and the challenges against gender and sexuality education.

Introduction - Ruben Zeeman - Transnational History Education and Backsliding Democracy

Regional Essays

1. Brazil

a. Paolo Otero dos Santos - The Diffuse Vigilance of History Teaching in Contemporary Brazil

b. Luanna Jales - Historical Visibility for Women, Black and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil and Latin America

c. Juliana Cesario Alvim Gomes - History, Sexuality and Gender Education: Intersections and Interactions in Brazil

2. Hungary

a. Andrea Petö and Flore Higuet - Illiberal History Education: The Case of Hungary

b. Péter Bihari - History Teaching in Hungary

c. Andreas Holtberget - History Teaching under Threat? Recent Cases from East-Central and Southeastern Europe

3. India

a. Aditya Mukherjee and Mridula Mukherjee - Weaponizing History: Threat to Democracy in India

b. Shraddha Kumbhojkar - History Textbooks in Maharashtra: Vernacular Realities

c. Adnaan Farooq - ‘Saffronization’ of the History Curriculum in India under the BJP

4. United States

a. Jeremy Young and Jacqueline Allain - State-Level Educational Censorship Legislation Affecting Colleges and Universities

b. Nelva Williamson - Teaching in the Age of Anti-History: A Teacher's Reflection

c. Mathias Möschel - European Critiques and Actions Against Critical Race Theory

Thematic Essays

1. Robbert-Jan Adriaansen - Teaching on Thin Ice: Social Media, Epistemic Conflict, and the Targeting of History Educators

2. Mariana Prandini Assis - Reimagining Gender and Sex Education as a Political Right

3. Eugenia Ama Breba Anderson and Samuel Adu-Gyamfi - The Hidden History Curriculum: Negotiated Gender History Education in Ghana

4. Antoon de Baets - History Education Moratoria during Transitions to Democracy

Conclusion

Eckhardt Fuchs and Wibke Westermeyer

Censorship in School Education

Index.

“Zero Growth, Socialist Modernity, and the Anti-Environmental Turn in Eastern Europe”

 A new article in the Journal of Modern European History:

“Zero Growth, Socialist Modernity, and the Anti-Environmental Turn in Eastern Europe”

The article examines how socialist Eastern Europe confronted the tension between a vision of modernity based on economic growth and emerging debates about the environmental limits to growth - and why anti-environmental positions ultimately prevailed.

The article was co-authored by Elena Kochetkova, Doubravka Olšáková, Vedran Duančić, Gleb Kazakov, Julia Lajus, Stephen Milder, Vedran Muić, and Olga Trufanova.

Read it here:

https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944261465602

CFP: Utopia(s) in the Arts and Art Spaces from the 1960s to the Present Day. Paris 02/2027, deadline: 20.10.2026

 CFP: Utopia(s) in the Arts and Art Spaces from the 1960s to the Present Day. Paris 02/2027, deadline: 20.10.2026

In his encyclopaedia of hopes, Bloch presents certain arts (painting, opera, literature and music) as “outlines of a better world” (Bloch, 1959). Art thus contributes to the emergence of utopia by preparing consciousness for it. At the heart of the notion of utopia – from manifestations predating the coining of the term to contemporary realizations – lies a constant questioning of the social status quo and a proposal for alternative societies. Utopia has developed around an evocative poetics that cuts across artistic disciplines. The symbolism constructed by utopia, shaped through artistic manifestations, tends to materialize in its realized counterpart. In this regard, the philosopher Roland Schaer points to the porosity between the literary – or more broadly fictional – counterpart and realized utopian projects. Thus, “utopia is, on the one hand, an imaginary projection into the fictional space created by the text of the narrative; on the other hand, the project it sets forth assumes implementation and as such it veers toward the side of history while simultaneously drawing its sustenance from fiction.” (Schaer, 2000).

The aim of this symposium is to examine the extension of the practice of utopia, both as a fictional genre and as a project, within various artistic manifestations and within art spaces themselves. It will also involve examining discourses on the subject. Indeed, utopia is considered in its transdisciplinary dimension, both from a methodological standpoint and in terms of the arts concerned (visual arts, literature, music, performing arts). The idea of contemporaneity is constitutive of this study, since the goal is to understand the evolution and current relevance of the notion. Proposals must focus on works or projects dating from after the 1960s, a decade that marked a significant renewal of utopia in light of its penetration into institutional critique and its echoes in the formation of counterculture. Across various artistic forms, utopia has been reconceptualized to push the limits of bourgeois institutions, reinvent the relationship between art and the public, and contribute to the upheaval of society.

The symposium invites contributions along the following lines of inquiry:

Axis 1 – Naming Utopia: Vocabulary and Interdisciplinary Typology

- epistemology of utopian terminology

- language shared across fields

- disciplinary differences and nuances

- common core underlying recourse to utopia

Axis 2 – Utopia as an Artistic Apparatus Presenting an Alternative to the World of Reference

- forms of the utopian work: literal apparatus / conceptual apparatus

- evolution and persistence of topoi, particularly uses of space

- “war of imaginaries”

- updating of utopian motifs (communities, emotions, identities, individualities, the living world…)

Axis 3 – Utopian Materializations: Spaces and Practices of Art

- art spaces: planned, transitory or realized; spaces of representation/display, dissemination, experimentation, pedagogy, resistance

- spatial practices and “utopian” discourses in the art and architecture of art places

- experimental practices and modes of artistic organization

Submission Guidelines

Proposals from researchers at all career stages (including Ph.D. students) are welcome, as are those from artists and practitioners of utopia.

Paper proposals, written in French or English, should not exceed 400 words (excluding bibliography) and must be accompanied by a short biographical note. They should be sent by 20 October 2026 to the following address: JEUtopieArts@protonmail.com

Applicants will be notified of the outcome, following review of the proposals, by the end of November.

Organizing Committee

Clara Cazaubiel (PhD candidate in Museum Studies, CERLIS, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Camille Lucot (PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, LISAA, Université Gustave Eiffel)

Adrian Wetter (PhD candidate in Film Studies, THALIM, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Universität Kassel, Germany)

Scientific Committee

Antoine de Baecque (Professor of Film Studies, ARTS, Ecole Normale Superieure)

Irène Langlet (Professor of Comparative Literature, LISAA, Université Gustave Eiffel)

François Mairesse (Professor of Museum Studies, CERLIS, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)