Call for abstracts: Theorizing Science Studies from Central and Eastern Europe

 Call for abstracts: Theorizing Science Studies from Central and Eastern Europe

Deadline: April 30th, 2026 (https://sc.amu.edu.pl/cfp-theorizing-science-studies-from-central-and-eastern-europe/)

We invite contributions to the edited volume Theorizing Science Studies from Central and Eastern Europe, to appear in Palgrave’s Transnationalizing Theory in Science and Technology Studies series, which is in line with the transnationalization initiatives of the Society for Social Studies of Science.

The volume is dedicated to developing theory, understood not as abstract universalism but as the production of concepts, categories, and analytical frameworks capable of intervening in contemporary debates on science and knowledge from the situated standpoint of Central and Eastern Europe.

Where discussions of center–periphery dynamics in science studies have largely been articulated through a Global North–South axis, less attention has been paid to the semi-peripheral positions of regions such as Central and Eastern Europe. We understand this region not as a geographical container but as an epistemic formation shaped by socialist and post-socialist trajectories, by projects of science-based modernization, and by unequal integration into global academic capitalism.

These experiences furnish distinctive resources for conceptual work that remain insufficiently articulated within dominant frameworks of science studies. Historically, the region produced notable contributions to the social studies of science–from Fleck’s historical epistemology to the “science of science” of Znaniecki and Ossowskis, from Marxist theories of knowledge by Lukács and Bogdanov to Soviet scientometrics developed in the USSR. Some elements of this legacy have entered Western canons, while others have been forgotten or provincialized. Meanwhile, the post-1990 reconfiguration of knowledge production in the region fostered increasing epistemic dependence, in which imported categories replaced local theoretical invention.

Our wager is that theorizing from Central and Eastern Europe is not a matter of adding new regional content to an existing conceptual map, but of unsettling the categories through which science and knowledge are commonly understood. Concepts are not neutral: they inherit the political ontologies of the worlds that produced them. Rather than relying on categories shaped by particular histories of capitalism, state formation, and scientific autonomy, this volume seeks forms of conceptual innovation that emerge from different historical experiences and epistemic conditions. Such work may both provincialize dominant assumptions within science studies and generate alternative problem-spaces and analytical lenses capable of reframing how science is understood globally.

We therefore welcome contributions that treat historical materials, (post-)socialist experiences, and regional epistemic conditions as resources for theory-building rather than as objects of documentation. To theorize “from” the region does not mean producing regional theory for its own sake, but using situated experiences to think with, and to challenge, prevailing categories in science studies.

Authors might engage, for example, with (post-)socialist approaches to science and its organisation; with notions of autonomy and dependency in knowledge production; with semi-periphery and “Global East” as analytical positions; with Marxist theories of knowledge and technology; or with attempts to conceptualize alternatives to academic dependency. These suggestions are illustrative rather than exhaustive. What matters is conceptual ambition and the orientation toward theory as situated practice.

Abstracts (max. 1000 words): April 30, 2026; Decisions: May 15, 2026; Full chapters: November 30, 2026.

Editors: Jakub Krzeski (Nicolaus Copernicus University), Ivan Kislenko (Adam Mickiewicz University), Emanuel Kulczycki (Humboldt University / DZHW), and Krystian Szadkowski (Adam Mickiewicz University).

Please submit abstracts to Jakub Krzeski (j.krzeski@umk.pl) and Ivan Kislenko (ivan.kislenko@amu.edu.pl)

Věra Dvořáčková – Martin Jemelka – Vlasta Mádlová: Vědci ve víru hudební vášně [Scientists in the whirlwind of musical passion]

Věra Dvořáčková – Martin Jemelka – Vlasta Mádlová: Vědci ve víru hudební vášně [Scientists in the whirlwind of musical passion]. Praha: Masarykův  ústav a Archiv AV ČR, v.v.i. 2026. ISBN: 978-80-88611-46-2

Publikace přináší v promyšleném výběru zajímavou a čtenářsky přívětivě uchopenou perspektivu nahlížející na vědecký svět jako prostor, kde se věda a hudba mohou přirozeně potkávat, prolínat a vzájemně obohacovat. První ze dvou hlavních částí knihy pojednává o vztazích mezi vědou a hudbou, o postavení hudby a hudební nauky v systému věd a o vazbách a možná až překvapivých souvislostech mezi hudbou a jednotlivými vědními disciplínami (biologií, lékařskou vědou, chemií, matematikou, fyzikou, astronomií, jazykovědou a filozofií). Druhá část představuje životní osudy třinácti českých vědců, příslušníků cca dvou až tří po sobě jdoucích generací, jimž byla společná pozoruhodná všestrannost napříč různými sférami lidské činnosti. Mimořádně vynikali nejen ve svém hlavním vědním oboru, ale i mnohostranným interdisciplinárním přesahem, a to na domácí i mezinárodní úrovni. Mimoto však byli rovněž výbornými, zpravidla celoživotně aktivními hudebníky a ve své době dokázali udávat směr i svými příkladnými hodnotovými měřítky a smyslem pro společenskou soudržnost.

FemEx dictionary of women experts

 𝙒𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣’𝙨 𝙃𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙈𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙙...𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙬𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙚𝙭𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙣𝙚𝙬𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙚:

FemEx is launching our dictionary of women experts’ lives and their contribution to feminist knowledge production, “Women Experts and Feminism. A biographical dictionary”.

You will find experts from different disciplines who have contributed to addressing and developing solutions to gender-based inequalities, mainly during the state-socialist period. We have collected biographical examples from East Central Europe - many of them yet unknown, forgotten, or better known for other areas of their expertise.

They devoted themselves to topics such as women's work, economic equality, household, childcare, sexuality, abortion and contraception, and health in general. They formed networks, maintained dialogue with one another and with experts and activists beyond the state-socialist world, and communicated knowledge to broad audiences.

Just click below and immerse yourself in these fascinating life trajectories:

https://womenexperts.eu

Andrii Portnov: Omeljan Pritsak and the Intellectual Origins of the Ukrainian "Harvard Miracle". Harvard University Press 2026

 Andrii Portnov: Omeljan Pritsak and the Intellectual Origins of the Ukrainian "Harvard Miracle". Harvard University Press 2026. ISBN 9780674304222

This is the first English-language intellectual biography of Omeljan Pritsak, the co-founder of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) and the first professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard. Andrii Portnov places Pritsak’s life and legacy in the context of Ukrainian and world historiography and illuminates the development of his scholarly interests from their emergence in interwar Poland, through the Sovietization of Western Ukraine and the perturbations of World War II, to German Oriental Studies in the 1940s and 1950s, North American Slavic studies, and to the international studies of the origins of Rus´. Pritsak’s intellectual trajectory unfolds as a combination of facing the challenges of establishing the field of Ukrainian studies in North America and engaging with influential scholars such as Dmytro Čyževskyj, Roman Jakobson, Ivan Krypiakevych, Oleksandr Ohloblyn, and Natalia Polonska-Vasylenko.

Based on unique materials the author uncovered in several German archives (Hamburg, Berlin, Tübingen, Munich, Heidelberg, and Bremen), this concise study serves as an introduction and an invitation to write a new intellectual history of Ukrainian history. Containing unique, previously unpublished photographs from Pritsak’s personal collection at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, this book sheds light on life and work of the enigmatic figure of Omeljan Pritsak—one of the most prominent, controversial, and multifaceted historians of Ukraine, Central Europe, and the Turko-Osmanic and Mongol worlds.

CFP: Seventh Congress on Polish Studies

Seventh Congress on Polish Studies

full cfp: https://www.polenforschung.de/

The Seventh Congress on Polish Studies, to be held in Potsdam in March 2027, offers academics from all disciplines whose work focuses on Poland a renewed opportunity to present their current research, to network, and to discuss the current state of Poland-related research. The overarching theme of the Potsdam Congress is the future as a challenge for the contemporary and historical present: “What’s Coming. Designing Futures.”

Being optimistic about the future is often difficult today, and not just in Poland: Neighboring Ukraine is afflicted by the terror of years of war, Russia's hybrid warfare threatens Europe’s stability, and climate change is undermining social development forecasts and individual life plans. The concurrence of ecological, demographic, political, and social challenges reveals the vulnerability of social and institutional orders and calls into question certainties previously adhered to. Uncertainty and the intrusion of the catastrophic into the present are impeding political visions of the future, especially the prospect of a “better future.” At the same time, the promise of the technological revolution is as salutary as it is dystopian, making the future even more unpredictable in other ways—but no less so. Nevertheless, envisioning and designing different futures is one of the most important crisis management skills. Thinking in terms of alternatives—be this through utopian impulses such as wishful thinking and dreams or through analytical forecasting or strategic planning—inspires hope, generates (self-)confidence, and creates scope for action.

What is the state of Poland’s thinking about the future? The temporal orientation of Polish culture continues to be markedly influenced by the past: The politics of history plays an extremely important role in everyday political life, retrotopian thinking is gaining ground in the right-wing conservative camp, and a sociopsychological diagnosis of Poland as a “traumaland” (Bilewicz)—albeit one that simultaneously seeks solutions—is garnering a great deal of attention. The ubiquity of the past can be construed as one phenomenon of sociologically diagnosed stagnation in the present (Gumbrecht, Nowotny, Bauman). Today, this “broad present” in Poland (and elsewhere) stands in precarious relation to the necessity, in times of crisis and increased ephemerality of ideas, to venture a long-term perspective and to design possible futures, not least to respond to the younger generations’ natural desire for their future.

What experiences from the past is future-oriented thinking in Poland today able to draw on? What role has the future played in Polish history—from its beginnings to the twentieth century? The Enlightenment reimagined the future, and the struggle for national self-assertion in the nineteenth century also revolved around shaping the future. Moreover, in both 1918 and 1944/45, attempts were made to transform utopian ideas into reality. The emergence of the Solidarność movement in 1980/81famously opened up perspectives on the future, giving rise to great hopes and expectations. Can we still learn something from this Polish experience of widespread solidarity today when, faced with multiple crises and growing inequality, the utopia of solidarity is (once again) being evoked nostalgically in many places? What other laboratories does Polish culture offer, or has it offered, for the future—in political practice, societal coexistence, and imaginatively in literature, art, film, theater, and popular culture? What fears, dreams, and visions of the future did they and do they discuss? How have Polish philosophy, sociology, and economics contributed to thinking about the future? Does the rapidly growing Polish economy care about and worry for the future? What visions of the future are (or have been) possible in Polish politics? What does the future hold for Polish democracy and the rule of law? How was and is the future of Europe perceived in Poland? What practical ways of dealing with uncertainty, risk, and fears about the future have existed and still exist in Polish society? We would welcome analyses and illustrative explorations of future-oriented processes and practices, prospective designs, and visions of the future in Poland’s cultural, social, and political past and present. Issues from all disciplines should be discussed collectively and in transnational or comparative contexts. Last but not least, another focus is the self-conception of the humanities and social sciences in times of uncertainty and fear for the future.

Characterized in its mission statement as “young, modern, future-oriented,” the University of Potsdam is a robust hub of cultural studies research on Poland. The Seventh Congress on Polish Studies in Potsdam provides an opportunity to engage in dialog across disciplinary boundaries and German-speaking countries, to establish and maintain contacts, to develop projects, and to learn about the current state of Polish studies. It follows on from the first six congresses (Darmstadt 2009, Mainz 2011, Giessen 2014, Frankfurt/Oder 2017, Halle 2020, Dresden 2024), each of which was attended by around 300 academics. Exhibitions by publishers and institutions, as well as an accompanying program, complement the congress. The congress languages are German, Polish, or English.

More information can be found here: https://www.polenforschung.de/

(Prolonging of) Call for Abstracts: Conference "Old Ideas in New Minds - Strategies of Autonomy from Antiquity to the Renaissance"

 (Prolonging of) Call for Abstracts: Conference "Old Ideas in New Minds - Strategies of Autonomy from Antiquity to the Renaissance" (Jena, 14-16 September 2026). New deadline: April 15th.

CfP: Old Ideas in New Minds - Strategies of Autonomy from Antiquity to the Renaissance

The Call for Abstracts for the conference "Old Ideas in New Minds - Strategies of Autonomy from Antiquity to the Renaissance", organized by the Graduiertenkolleg 2792 ("Autonomie Heteronomer Texte in Antike und Mittelalter" - FSU Jena) has a new deadline: April 15th, 2026.

NEW Deadline for submissions – 15.04.2026

What happens when existing concepts are applied in new historical, intellectual, or cultural contexts? How does a mere copy become more than a copy? When engaging with ‘pre-texts’ – the source texts used in the composition of new texts – authors employed various adaptive strategies, from faithful translation to wholesale reinterpretation. Different fields had different methods of adapting texts and concepts. For example, while providing a foundation for later texts, pre-texts were often reinterpreted and re-evaluated through commentary (Sorabji 1990), resulting in different and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the same text. Even the simple addition of a preface could significantly influence the reception of a pre-text, and reorganization within manuscripts could create entirely new textual units, thereby leading to recontextualization (Piccione 2003). Through selection, curation, and editing, the successive copying of source texts transformed them into new, autonomous texts (Herzog 1989). Concerning literature, the term wiedererzählen (retelling) has been coined to describe different forms of remodelling a text and to prompt questions about authorship itself (Worstbrock, 1999). While the stories that were retold remained fundamentally similar, the narrative focus, style, and many other aspects changed drastically.

All the above textual strategies have one thing in common: they consciously rely on a pre-text or source. We refer to this phenomenon as heteronomy. Our Research Training Group focuses on heteronomous texts that still are original, autonomous products through their commentary, continuation, compilation, or adaptation. Building on our first international conference, ‘(Re)Create. Towards a Theory of Heteronomous Texts’, we seek to explore the concept of ‘autonomy’ through interdisciplinary examination of texts from various fields of research.

We welcome papers addressing topics such as:

- how heteronomous texts and concepts differ from their sources depending on cultural/historical context,

- how they interpret renowned authors and treat their authority (as well as their own),

- how they developed in the context of their historical intellectual reception and hermeneutic interpretation,

- whether every difference to the original text can be perceived to be an autonomous aspect,

- how to deal with authorship in heteronomous texts,

- how material and aesthetical expressions were used and interpreted.

We invite contributions from (but not limited to) the following fields:

Theology and Biblical Studies, Latin, Middle and Neo Latin Studies, Greek and Byzantine Studies, Syriac Studies, Ancient and Medieval History and Philosophy, German Medieval Studies, and Roman Law.

Proposals may take the form of either:

- a 30-minute presentation followed by 15 minutes of discussion, with the possibility of publication in the conference proceedings, or

- a 10-minute project pitch followed by a short discussion (especially encouraged for early career researchers).

In your abstract (max. 300 words) please specify your chosen presentation format and include, on a separate page, your name, profession, affiliation, short academic CV, and email address or equivalent contact information. Please submit your abstracts to Daniele Bonino and Jonathan Trächtler via email at: oldideasinnewminds@uni-jena.de.

We very much look forward to your proposals and will aim for gender parity in our selection. The language of the conference is English. Reimbursement for hotel and travel costs can be made available.

9th DHST DISSERTATION PRIZE (2027)

 9th DHST DISSERTATION PRIZE (2027)  CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Division of History of Science and Technology of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (DHST/IUHPST) is happy to invite submissions to the 9th DHST Dissertation Prize, which recognizes outstanding doctoral work in the broad field of the history of science and technology.

Established by the DHST General Assembly held during the 22nd International Congress of History of Science in Beijing, 2005, the prize has been awarded every two years since 2013. Up to three prizes and an unspecified number of honorable mentions will be awarded to the authors of doctoral dissertations completed and filed between 16 April 2024 and 15 April 2026.

The competition does not specify categories, but to be considered, submissions must unequivocally relate to the history of science, technology, or medicine. The Prize Committee will employ its best endeavors to ensure the broadest coverage of subjects, geographical areas, time periods, and methodologies, and encourages applications from any country and in any language. To ensure that the Committee appoint expert reviewers, a summary of the dissertation in English in mandatory.

The prize consists of a certificate and an invitation to give a talk in a plenary session of the 28th International Congress of History of Science and Technology, to be held in Paris, in July 2029. Awardees are entitled to the waiver of the Congress registration fee and assistance with accommodation expenses. The winner of a prize whose dissertation engages substantially with Islamic science and culture may additionally be considered for the İhsanoğlu Prize funded by the Turkish Society of History of Science.

PRIZE COMMITTEE: The Committee includes DHST Council members and distinguished subject specialists.

CALENDAR: Exclusively electronic applications open 1 May and close 1 August 2026 (11:59 pm UTC). Announcement of prize winners will be made in early 2027.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: To apply, the following PDF documents must be filed through this online form:

- The full dissertation (submissions in any language are welcome)

- A summary of the dissertation in English (maximum 25 double-spaced pages). There is no template for the summary, but it must contain the title of the dissertation, candidate’s name and current contact information, date of completion/filing of the dissertation, and the doctoral title-granting institution.

Additionally, a recommendation letter (at most 2 pages long) from the PhD supervisor or a PhD committee member assessing the dissertation and its historiographical significance must be sent within the same time frame by email to iuhpstdhst@gmail.com, care of the DHST Secretary-General, with the subject line in the format DHST Prize 2027 - Candidate'sLastName. The letter is confidential and must be sent directly by the signatory.