Volker Roelcke, Ed., Politik in der Wissenschaft: Zur Evaluierung von „NS-Belastung“ in wissenschaftlichen Kontexten

Volker Roelcke, Ed., Politik in der Wissenschaft: Zur Evaluierung von „NS-Belastung“ in wissenschaftlichen Kontexten, Halle (Saale), Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2024. doi: 10.26164/leopoldina_10_01229.

OA: https://levana.leopoldina.org/receive/leopoldina_mods_01229;jsessionid=D2BD0C3BA0575D907555A7BC5FFF336A

Die Erforschung der NS-Vergangenheit und die Aufarbeitung der „NS-Belastung“ von Behörden, Unternehmen und wissenschaftlichen Institutionen erlebte in den letzten Jahren eine beachtenswerte Konjunktur. Dabei spielte der Begriff der „NS-Belastung“ der historischen Akteure eine zentrale Rolle. Die „Belastung“ wurde dabei oft mit Umfang, Zeitpunkt und Dauer der Mitgliedschaft in NS-Organisationen (NSDAP) gleichgesetzt. Diese Reduktion wird wegen des tendenziell formalen Charakters im Herangehen zunehmend kritisch diskutiert. Der vorliegende Band weitet am Beispiel ausgewählter Gruppen von Akademiemitgliedern (z. B. Psychiatern und Psychologen, Mathematikern u. a.), ausgewählten Biographien und Fallstudien den Blick von individuellen Haltungen und Verhaltensweisen auf strukturelle Bedingungen, die Zwänge und Handlungsspielräume für die Akteure ausmachten. Zudem werden die historische Wandelbarkeit des Begriffs „Belastung“ und die unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen in Ost und West im Kontext der „Entnazifizierungs“-Prozeduren problematisiert.

Content

Politik in der Wissenschaft: Zur Frage einer „NS-Belastung“ bei Mitgliedern der Leopoldina : Einleitung

p. 7 Roelcke, Volker

Fallstricke, Sackgassen, Auswege : NS-Belastungsforschung jenseits der „Individualisierung des Faschismusproblems“

p. 19 Steuwer, Janosch

Taxonomien der Schuld: Zur historischen Bedeutung (straf-)rechtlicher und quasi-rechtlicher Kategorien im Umgang mit NS-‚Belastungen‘ in wissenschaftlichen Kontexten, 1935 –1950

p. 31 Weinke, Annette

Die justizielle Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen in Ost- und Westdeutschland seit 1945 : ein Überblick

p. 47 Raim, Edith

Handlungsspielräume von Wissenschaftlern im Nationalsozialismus: Metahistorische Vorüberlegungen und einige Beispiele aus der Mathematik

p. 77 Epple, Moritz

Parteigänger, Kollaborateure, Abtrünnige? Anmerkungen zur Analyse von Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern im Nationalsozialismus

p. 93 Schmiedebach, Heinz-Peter

Biowissenschaftler als Akteure in Menschenversuchen zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Zum Verantwortungsproblem biomedizinischer Forschung

p. 117 Schwerin, Alexander von

„NS-Belastung“ unter Akademiemitgliedern. Strategien der (Neu-) Ausrichtung im Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel der Psychiatrisch- Neurologischen Sektion der Leopoldina

p. 141 Rotzoll, Maike

NSDAP-Mitglieder in den Akademien der Wissenschaften : Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg, Leipzig, München und Wien im Vergleich

p. 177 Feichtinger, Johannes; Klos, Sandra

The Virologist Eugen Haagen (1898 –1972) as a Late Nazi Election to the Leopoldina of a Virologist and Professor of Hygiene at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg

p. 193 Weindling, Paul

Das Leopoldina-Mitglied Johannes Stark (1874 –1957): Duell mit der Dogmatik

p. 213 Stolz, Lisa

Das Leopoldina-Mitglied Richard Siebeck (1883 –1965) im Nationalsozialismus und in der frühen Nachkriegszeit

p. 233 Roelcke, Volker

Now online: Call for Papers: Eastern Marxisms – A Special Issue of Historical Materialism

 Now online: Call for Papers: Eastern Marxisms – A Special Issue of Historical Materialism

Guest editors: Anna Beria (Kingston University, London), Isabel Jacobs (Queen Mary University of London), Giorgi Kobakhidze (Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès), Jiří Růžička (The Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

 

The distinctive tradition of post-war critical and radical thought in East and Central Europe has long been forgotten or suppressed. Even more controversially, the idea that this tradition found its most productive expression in a unique form of Marxist thought is often denied. This is because ‘Eastern Marxism(s)’ – whatever the term may encompass – has frequently been conflated with the rigid, state-imposed, Stalinist version of Marxist ideology. We believe the time has come, especially in light of the contemporary multiple crises of capitalism, to reassess and revive this tradition. However, while ‘Western Marxism’ has been retrospectively canonised around figures such as Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci, ‘Eastern’ Marxism(s) in CEE face much more significant challenges in terms of temporal, personal and also regional demarcations.

According to a still widespread Western-centric view, which identifies Eastern Marxisms with the ‘dogmatic’ state doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, a properly ‘Eastern’ period of Eastern Marxism begins with the rise of Stalin, loses steam with the critique of Stalin in the 1950s and 60s, and finally reaches its inevitable demise when the regimes supporting it collapse in 1989–91. Individual radical theorists from the CEE are, of course, well-known to some in the West, but they tend to be regarded as exceptional personalities, solitary figures who arose despite their Eastern context, thanks in large part to their exposure to Western influence (K. Kosík, E. Ilyenkov, Praxis School etc.).

A closer historical examination might reveal a very different picture. As a more or less coherent body of philosophical ideas, political doctrine, and socio-economic theory, Marxism emerged in CEE before World War II, whereas, in the West, one finds only scattered Marxist thinkers rather than a fully developed Marxist tradition. Even the so-called founding figures of Western Marxism shaped their perspectives outside Western Europe, primarily in response to the Russian Revolution – a shared foundational moment of both ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Marxisms. Conversely, what has been termed ‘Eastern Marxism’ (e.g., by Marcuse and Merleau-Ponty) has typically referred exclusively to ‘Marxism-Leninism’, which appears to be rather a belated offshoot of Second International Marxist orthodoxy, albeit with a strong emphasis on political revolution.

It may therefore be more appropriate to shift the East/West Marxist divide to the post-1945 era, or more precisely, to 1956 for the Eastern Bloc. From this perspective, the term ‘Eastern Marxism’ should designate various currents of Marxist thought that primarily criticised and sought ways out of Stalinism. While all of these currents reflected their international intellectual moment and reacted to developments in the West, the ideas that emerged were their own, made possible by the specific context of the often-neglected region of CEE and its post-Stalinist condition.

As a result, the simplistic perspective that reduces Eastern Marxism(s) to the rise and fall of Marxist-Leninist dogma neglects the fact that we can hardly speak about the division line between the eastern and the western Marxisms in the pre-war era. ‘Marxism-Leninism’ continued to develop within the epistemological and ontological (but not political) constraints set up by the Marxist orthodoxy, while the ‘revisionist’ or heterodox currents of that time should not be viewed as precursors of western Marxism but, rather, as a reaction to both theoretical and practical shortcomings of the orthodoxy as well as to the interwar (often) revolutionary conditions of the CEE region. There is no denying that an East/West divide can be discussed, but it should not be framed through the shallow opposition of a creative postwar West versus a dogmatic postwar East. Instead, it should be drawn based on concepts that capture the differences between these respective ‘modes’ of Marxism – both as totalities that encompass internal plurality and as responses to the specific historical and social conditions in which they emerged.

This project of questioning and scouring the past of Eastern Marxism(s) calls for different research methods from those used for researching the Marxisms of the West. ‘Western Marxism’ could be reconstructed with knowledge of German, along with some French and English and a selective reading of Gramsci in translation. And, by the early postwar period, almost all the key works were either published or available in accessible archives. The ‘tradition’ of Eastern Marxism(s) has been written in dozens of languages, sometimes published in now-obscure journals, or in samizdat, or hidden in dresser drawers until the 1990s, when many of the born-again-right-wing authors no longer wanted their old leftist writings to be made public, and when few publishers in any case wanted to publish them.

While the context of capitalism and fascism that gave birth to Western Marxism is relatively comprehensible to the international reader, the diverse context of Central and Eastern Europe is barely understood, obscured by stereotypes and Cold War tropes and rhetorics that continue into contemporary leftism. The reconstruction of a plurality of Eastern Marxisms and their emancipatory-theoretical fellow travellers calls for a large collaborative effort, pooling linguistic and locally embedded knowledge and access to libraries and archives across CEE and providing the detailed historical context necessary to illuminate the region’s theories, as a vast source of globally unknown theorising on issues that remain urgent today: science and ecology, humanism and technology, nationalism and internationalism, history and political subjectivity, planning and participation, material determination and cultural emancipation.

We particularly invite contributions that are conceptually oriented rather than pure case studies and address the following non-exclusive questions and themes in relation to the critical and radical thought in East and Central Europe post-1956:

What are the difficulties and potentials of searching for a definition of Eastern Marxism? Which working definitions of Eastern Marxisms can be developed?

In what ways does the term ‘Eastern’ categorise the Marxist perspectives from CEE?

What distinct and interrelated currents can be identified within different Eastern Marxist traditions?

When and where does Eastern Marxism begin and end? Continuities and ruptures within the tradition? Problems of periodisation?

Relevance of Eastern Marxisms today?

East meets West. The intersections, dialogues, parallel developments and mutual influence between Eastern and Western Marxisms

East meets South. Imperialism, colonialism and humanism in Eastern Marxisms and anticolonial and decolonial praxis?

Regional differences, distinctions, schisms and local Marxist traditions within Eastern Marxisms?

We welcome proposals for contributions to the Eastern Marxisms special issue of Historical Materialism. Interested authors are invited to submit a title and an abstract (maximum 300 words) outlining the proposed article to info@historicalmaterialism.org by 20 June 2025. Please clearly indicate in the subject line or body of the email that the submission is intended for the Eastern Marxisms Special Issue.

Following a selection process, chosen contributors will be invited to submit full articles to Historical Materialism. All articles will be subject to the journal’s standard peer-review process and editorial evaluation.

Please note that an invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee publication, and acceptance of the abstract does not imply any commitment by the journal to publish the final piece. Deadline for the submission of full papers is 1 March 2026.

hps.cesee global book talk: Borbála Zsuzsanna Török, László Kontler, Morgane Labbé: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880

 hps.cesee global book talk: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880. Monday, May 26, 11:00 am EDT / 17:00 CET / 18:00 EEST, Zoom.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Virtual platform HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) is proud to present its forthcoming book talk on a new publication on history of statistics. László Kontler and Morgane Labbé will join Borbála Zsuzsanna Török to comment on her recent book: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 (2024) [1], in a discussion moderated by Katalin Stráner.

Monday, May 26, 11:00 am DST / 17:00 CET / 18:00 EEST, Zoom.

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the Zoom link, please register here: https://forms.gle/mFnfLEDXEbC8L8iY8 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com

[1] Borbála Zsuzsanna Török: The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 (Oxford, New York: Berghahn 2024)

“The formation of modern European states during the long 19th century was a strenuous process, challenged by the integration of widely different territories and populations. The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 builds on recent research to investigate the history of statistics as an overlooked part of the sciences of the state in Habsburg legal education as well as within the broader public sphere. By exploring the practices and social spaces of statistics, Borbála Zsuzsanna Török uncovers its central role in imagining the composite Habsburg Monarchy as a modern and unified administrative space.”

Participants

Borbála Zsuzsanna Török is a historian specializing in the social history of civil justice and modern state knowledge in the Habsburg Monarchy. She currently serves as part-time acting professor for Modern History at the University of Heidelberg. She is Privatdozentin at University of Vienna’s Institute for Austrian Historical Research and PI of the research project “Mobilisierung der Ziviljustiz und Sozialpolitik in der Habsburgermonarchie, 1873–1914,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), whose follow-up project has been recently approved. Her research focuses on the social history of law, property, statistics, nationalism, and knowledge transfer in East-Central Europe. She has held fellowships from the FWF, DFG, and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and is the author of Exploring Transylvania. Geographies of Knowledge and Entangled Histories of a Multiethnic Province, 1790 – 1914 (2015).

László Kontler is a historian of early modern European intellectual history and the Enlightenment, with a focus on political thought, historiography, and the transnational circulation of ideas. Based at Central European University since its inception, he has also held fellowships and taught at institutions including Cambridge, Rutgers, and Oxford. His recent work includes studies on the reception of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, the Viennese Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell, and the cultural construction of humanity in the early modern period.

Morgane Labbé is a historian and demographer specializing in population policies, nationalism, and social protection in Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. She is a Directrice d'études at the EHESS (Paris), affiliated with the Centre of Historical Research (CRH), and has played key roles in international academic partnerships with institutions in Warsaw and Michigan. Her research focuses on the history of statistics, social politics, demography, and charitable institutions in imperial contexts, and she has been an active contributor to scholarly networks and editorial boards in these fields.

Katalin Stráner is a historian of modern Europe at Newcastle University, with a focus on transnational history, particularly the history of science, migration, and urban culture in the Habsburg Empire and East Central Europe. She holds a PhD in History from Central European University and has held fellowships and academic positions across Europe and the US, including at Harvard, UCL, and the European University Institute. Her research explores how knowledge and scientific ideas are produced, translated, and transformed through cultural mobility, with current projects on Darwinism in Habsburg Hungary and migration from East Central Europe to Britain.

Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, 2025, Issue 1 (OA)

 Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, 2025, Issue 1 is online. open access, Polish&English with English abstracts. Open access: https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/kwartalnik-historii-nauki-i-techniki/numer/tom-70-numer-1

Spis treści 

LEKSYKOGRAFIA BIOGRAFICZNA W EPOCE ROZWOJU HUMANISTYKI CYFROWEJ 

Andrzej Kajetan Wróblewski, Biografi czne słowniki dziedzinowe; przewagi i konieczność. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 

Piotr Köhler, Słownik biografi czny botaników polskich na tle dziejów polskiej biografi styki specjalistów z zakresu nauk o roślinach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 

Rafał Stobiecki, Słowniki biografi czne historyków. Kilka uwag z perspektywy historyka historiografi i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 

Maria Guzik-Jureczka, Piotr Jaskulski, Adam Zapała, Rola narzędzi cyfrowych w przetwarzaniu i udostępnianiu biogramów postaci historycznych . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 

Kamila Follprecht, Słowniki biografi czne – źródła z XIX i XX wieku w Archiwum Narodowym w Krakowie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 

Cezary W. Domański, Nota, biogram, życiorys… W stronę idealnego słownika biografi cznego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 

ARTYKUŁY 

Karol Kollinger, Mykoła Szarlemań i polowania Andronika I – rewizja. Przyczynek do historii ukraińskiej zoologii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89 

Karol Łopatecki, Adam Musiuk, Poziomowanie linii spławnej na Kanale Augustowskim – analiza systemu śluz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103 

Radosław Poleski, Disciplinary Proceedings against Warsaw Astronomers Michał Kamieński and Maciej Bielicki for Their Activities During World War II . . . . . .125 

Andrzej Zawistowski, Sawa Frydman i Czesław Nowiński – żywoty całkowicie nierównoległe. Szkic do dziejów środowiska naukowego epoki stalinizmu . . . . . . . .149 

POLEMIKI I REFLEKSJE 

Justyna Rogińska, Pierwsza biografi a gubińskiego astronoma. Kilka uwag na marginesie książki Gottfried Kirch (1639–1710) – Astronom, Kalendermacher, Pietist, Frühaufklärer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167 

ARTYKUŁY RECENZYJNE 

Bartosz Kaliski, Klement Lukeš, czyli jak zostać dysydentem w Czechosłowacji. . . . . .195 

RECENZJE Michał Piekarski, Piotr Olechowski, Agonia Polaków we Lwowie 1944–1959, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa 2024, ss. 495, tabele, ilustracje. . . . . . . . . . .211 

Zbigniew J. Wójcik, Jerzy B. Miecznik, O losach polskich geologów, cz. 1, Państwowy Instytut Geologiczny – Państwowy Instytut Badawczy, Warszawa 2017 (seria wydawnicza „Wokół geologii”), ss. 312; Jerzy B. Miecznik, O losach polskich geologów, cz. 2, Państwowy Instytut Geologiczny – Państwowy Instytut Badawczy, Warszawa 2023 (seria wydawnicza „Wokół geologii”), ss. 266 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .216 

KRONIKA Olga Morozowa, Międzynarodowa konferencja naukowa „Stosunki polsko-ukraińskie wobec rosyjskiej agresji na Ukrainę: konteksty historyczne i współczesne” (Uniwersytet Warszawski, 11–12 kwietnia 2024 r.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223 

Grażyna Gierczak, Aneta Krawczyk, Sprawozdanie z Ogólnopolskiego Kongresu Historii Medycyny w setną rocznicę I Zjazdu Polskich Historyków Medycyny i Farmacji (1924–2024) – Wrocław, 21–23 maja 2024 r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231

 Jacek Soszyński, Konferencja „Lech Szczucki (1933–2019): badacz reformacji i renesansu (z doświadczeń uczonego i społecznika)”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241

hps.cesee article alert

Milan Hanyš, National Humanism, Zionist Liberalism, and Democracy in the Philosophy of Felix Weltsch, The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 2025;, ybaf002, https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaf002

Voerkelius, Mirjam. "Darwinism and the Human-Animal Boundary in the Soviet Union." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 26 no. 1, 2025, p. 35-61. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/kri.2025.a953436.

Volf, Darina. "The Thorny Road to a Handshake: The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project as a Challenge to the US and Soviet Space Programs." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 26 no. 1, 2025, p. 63-90. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/kri.2025.a953437.

Gordin, Michael D. "The Social and Intellectual Roots of Loren Graham." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 26 no. 1, 2025, p. 244-249. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/kri.2025.a953447.

Stanislav Serhiienko: "Endre Sík und das Rassenproblem im sowjetischen Diskurs. Zur Geschichte eines frühen „konstruktivistischen“ Rassenbegriffs" [Endre Sík and the Race Problem in Soviet Discourse – On the History of an Early “Constructivist” Concept of Race]. PERIPHERIE – Politik • Ökonomie • Kultur. Nr. 176 (3-), S. 439-459. https://doi.org/10.3224/peripherie.v44i3.03

Juhászová, Tereza. “Teachers in Power: Nation-Building and Loyalty in a Czechoslovak Periphery (1918–1947).” Contemporary European History, 2025, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777325000153.

Wacław Pagórski: Die Allgemeine Weltbeschreibung von Cosmus von Simmer (1581–1650): Zum Bestand und zum Wert eines vergessenen kosmografischen Werkes, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 1/2025, S. 1–29. https://doi.org/10.25627/202574111610

Ličen, Daša. “Against ‘Plebeian Ignorance’ and for ‘Civilized Behavior’: Habsburg Trieste’s Società Zoofila as a Bourgeois Instrument.” Austrian History Yearbook, 2025, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0067237825000207.

Jan Surman: Between Science and Architecture: Exhibiting Science and Technology in Interwar Europe. Perspectives on Science 2025, 33 (2): 127–157. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00637

Baltic worlds, Special Theme Section: Universities in times of crisis and transformation

 Baltic worlds,  Special Theme Section:  Universities in times of crisis and transformation

URL: https://balticworlds.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/BW_2025_no.1_p.57_108._THEME.pdf

Guest Editors: Friedrich Cain & Elisa Satjukow 

57 Introduction. Friedrich Cain & Elisa Satjukow 

peer-reviewed articles 

60 The economic role of higher education, science, and technology in late socialist Yugoslavia, Vedran Duančić 

74 Hegemony over higher education. The case of Albania, Pavjo Gjini 

98 Political materialities of status-making and unmaking. Universities in the imperial cityscape of St. Petersburg, Iuliia Gataulina 

interviews 

86 Olga Shparaga on Belarusian Academia in exile: “It is clear that something is happening in the field of education within and around Belarus”, Friedrich Cain 

93 Tereza Hendl on RUTA and epistemic communities in solidarity for Ukraine: “We are reclaiming debates on our societies”, Elisa Satjukow

Aksonova, Natalia – Chlaňová, Tereza – Velychko, Hanna (ed.) Історико-культурний феномен Української господарської академії в Подєбрадах [The historical and cultural phenomenon of the Ukrainian Economic Academy in Poděbrady].

 Aksonova, Natalia – Chlaňová, Tereza – Velychko, Hanna (ed.) Історико-культурний феномен Української господарської академії в Подєбрадах [The historical and cultural phenomenon of the Ukrainian Economic Academy in Poděbrady]. Praha: Karolinum 2025. ISBN: 978-80-246-6017-2

OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.14712/9788024660172

Konferenční sborník Історико-культурний феномен Української господарської академії в Подєбрадах (Historicko-kulturní fenomén Ukrajinské hospodářské akademie v Poděbradech) představuje aktuální studie věnované problematice ukrajinské emigrace v meziválečném Československu, a zvláště Ukrajinské hospodářské akademii v Poděbradech. Studie jsou ve většině založeny na výzkumu dobových periodik a archivních materiálů a přinášejí celou řadu nových pohledů na tuto komplexní problematiku, která tvoří významnou část ukrajinsko-českých vztahů. Pozornost je věnována nejen peripetiím založení akademie a jejího působení v meziválečném Československu, ale zaměřuje se i na různé aspekty činnosti této vzdělávací instituce a jednotlivé významné osobnosti. Řada studií téma Ukrajinské hospodářské akademie přesahuje a věnuje se širším otázkám a aspektům existence ukrajinské emigrace.

CFP: Magical Realism and Surrealism in Central and Eastern European Graphic Art between 1945 and 1990

 CFP:  Magical Realism and Surrealism in Central and Eastern European Graphic Art  between 1945 and 1990 -  Szolnok, Damjanich János Museum, Hungary , 04.12.2025 - 05.12.2025, Deadline: 30.04.2025

During the decades of the socialist era (1945-1990), graphic art flourished in Central and Eastern European countries that were under Soviet influence. While reproduction techniques in art were supported by the cultural policy of the socialist state for ideological reasons, graphic art experienced a new renaissance globally. However, one underexplored aspect of this period’s art history is the tendency in graphic art, which did not associate itself neither with the official state art nor fully embraced avant-garde formal experimentations. Instead, it represented an alternative modernism, reflecting a third way approach. It was an intellectual attitude often characterized by escapism, a deep engagement with the use of traditional graphic techniques and the alignment with the pictorial traditions of medieval graphics (for example, echoing Dürer). It emphasized the appreciation of craftsmanship, figurative, narrative and allegorical imagery, and the reinterpretation of Renaissance and Baroque iconographic types. An additional feature of this graphic art was the anachronistic incorporation of post-war scientific achievements and technical machinery related to space exploration and Cold War weaponry into a classicising, mythological milieu.

The conference welcomes papers that contextualize these parallel artistic tendencies within the wider framework of Central and Eastern European graphic art. It is important to give a definite outline of those tendencies of the region that are closely related to surrealism and magic realism. Although these archaic, narrative or metaphorical representations have often been described in art history as apolitical, their esoteric or escapist vision and their frequently self-ironic or grotesque qualities can be interpreted as subtle critiques of their time.We invite papers addressing the following themes in relation to Central and Eastern European graphic art of the period 1945-1990:Surrealist and magic realist tendencies in graphic art of the period

Modern reinterpretations of the classical and Christian mythology (for example, the temptation of St Anthony)

Homage to the old masters such as Dürer, Bosch or Bruegel

Visual traditions and worldviews of folklore as a source for alternative modernism

Hybrid anachronisms: the integration of technical achievements and contemporary political references into traditional iconographic frameworks

The conference gives an occasion to present the outcomes of the research project, funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, which examines the oeuvre of three Hungarian graphic artists, Margit Ágotha (1938-2015), Mihály Gácsi (1926-1987) and Csaba Rékassy (1937-1989) and outlines their broader historical context. These artists, active primarily between 1960 and 1980 within the socialist art scene, worked extensively with graphic techniques. Rékassy was an exceptional master of engraving, while Margit Ágotha and Mihály Gácsi were experts in relief printing. All three of them were frequently engaged with biblical and mythological themes, often reinterpreting them in contemporary contexts. Rékassy was particularly drawn to ancient mythology, illustrating Ovid’s Metamorphosis, while also interested in space exploration and astronomy; Margit Ágotha created cosmological compositions in the manner of medieval popular engravings, and Gácsi reimagined biblical stories, often alluding to Cold War anxieties in his dystopian visions of the future. Members of our research team will present comparative studies of these artists at the conference.

Conference format: hybrid (in person or online)

Conference languages: Hungarian, English

Location: Szolnok, Damjanich János Museum, Hungary

Date: 4-5 December 2025.

Abstracts (max. 2,000 characters) for 20-minute presentations in Hungarian or English should be submitted to Nándor Szebenyi szebenyi@djm.hu by 30 April 2025.

Notifications of acceptance will be announced by 31 May 2025.

Accommodation in Szolnok will be provided for conference speakers.

We welcome both in person and online participations, please indicate your preference in the application.

Selected proceedings from the conference will be published in a digital format in 2026.

[Image: Mihály Gácsi Noah, 1975 (linocut, 250 x 350 mm, inv.No.: DM 84.13.1.)]

CfP: Mathematics and Language A historical Perspective

 Czech Society for History of Science and Technology (SDVT) and

Czech Mathematical Union (JČMF)

cordially invite you to an interdisciplinary workshop

Mathematics and Language

A historical Perspective

Call for contributed papers

Dates: Thursday 12 June 2025 (sessions during the day and social dinner)

Friday 13 June 2025

Venue: Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Poříčí 538/31, Brno CZ, room 37

With its variety of symbolism and specific terminology in its various branches, mathematicians seem to

speak different languages. That mathematics in itself is a language is generally accepted, since it has

been viewed as the language of nature since the early modern period. Closer to our days, it was a

mathematical language that underlined the development of programming languages. Mathematics

teaching in the late twentieth century even had the function of teaching proper ways of expressing

one’s ideas; and the linguistic metaphors go even further: in order to use (apply) mathematics, we may

speak of translating the real-life problem into mathematics and after tackling the problem

mathematically, we interpret the results. There are many intrinsic connections between mathematics

and language, but they form but one link between the two.

In different cultures, from Ancient to Modern times, mathematics was done differently. Studying

mathematical practices in the different cultures has long been a topic that inspired philosophers and

historians of mathematics. Studying the different practices leads to erosion of the belief that

mathematics is universal. Mathematics is done by people who have their specific background,

purposes, and ways of expressing themselves. Opening the field of mathematical practice and studying

mathematical culture in different land and in different languages is a playground for historians of

mathematics: mathematics is local and mathematical results relevant for the particular period of time.

An intriguing connection between mathematics and language arises with the issue of translation and

speaking other languages. The language of communication became an issue in the context of

internationalism around 1900. Keen to communicate with their colleagues from other countries

directly, mathematicians developed symbolic languages, discarding the use of ordinary language in

mathematics. At the same period of time, many mathematicians became interested in a language that

would be easy to learn, even though it would be a foreign language for everybody. Esperanto was

embraced by several mathematicians of the time.

While in the nineteenth century, practising mathematics in a certain language was an issue connected

with national revival, stemming from romanticism, in the twentieth century, the language in which

mathematics was written also revealed political choices. The number and choice of official languages

at an international congress depended also on the countries allowed to participate in the congresses.

There are many other issues that connect the two areas, mathematics and language, in the methods of

study, in mutual interactions between mathematics and linguistics, including the problem of translation

and transcription of Ancient mathematics and the meta-debates involved in that issue as well as

practical considerations of translation. The two-day workshop seeks to bring together scholars who

would like to present their work in this perspective.

Invited speakers:

Frédéric Metin (CNRS and INSPÉ Bourgogne, France)

Elías Fuentes Guillén (CAS Prague, Czechia)

We invite scholars to send abstracts of their proposed talks (between 200 and 500 words) to

hdurnova@ped.muni.cz by Thursday 1 May 2025. Notification of acceptance by 10 May 2025.

Topics include, but are not limited to the history of:

o Mathematics as language.

o Mathematics practised in different languages.

o Geometry in Engineering, Nomography and other outdated disciplines ,

o Translating mathematics.

Selected papers may be published in a special issue of the journal History of Sciences and Technology

https://dvt-journal.cz/en/ (ISSN 0300-4414 print, 2788-3485 online).

Conference fee: EUR 30 or CZK 600, payable on site or through bank transfer.

Contact e-mail: hdurnova@ped.muni.cz

Looking forward to seeing you in Brno!

Helena Durnová (Brno) & Jan Kotůlek (Ostrava)

This workshop is a part of the series Mathematics and Society,

https://math-and-society.webnode.page/

Hubert Mazur: Historia na dotyk. Działalność edukacyjna polskich archiwów państwowych w zakresie współpracy ze szkołami (1919-2018) [Touching the history. Educational activities of Polish state archives in cooperation with schools (1919-2018)].

 Hubert Mazur: Historia na dotyk. Działalność edukacyjna polskich archiwów państwowych w zakresie współpracy ze szkołami (1919-2018) [Touching the history. Educational activities of Polish state archives in cooperation with schools (1919-2018)]. Kraków: wydawnictwo UP 2025. ISBN 978-83-68260-85-4

Monografia stanowi pierwsze w polskiej nauce tak kompleksowe i pogłębione opracowanie zagadnienia praktycznej realizacji funkcji edukacyjnej archiwów państwowych w kontekście ich współpracy ze szkołami. Nowatorskie ujęcie tematu, poparte szeroką analizą źródeł i praktyk, czyni z publikacji istotny wkład w rozwój archiwistyki oraz pedagogiki. Autor ukazuje archiwa jako instytucje aktywnie uczestniczące w procesie edukacyjnym i społecznym, przekraczające tradycyjne ramy swojej działalności. Praca inspiruje do refleksji nad aktualnym stanem i perspektywami funkcjonowania polskich archiwów państwowych, zwracając uwagę na ich rosnącą rolę w kształtowaniu świadomości historycznej i obywatelskiej.

Peter Urbanitsch: "... das Schulwesen ist und bleibet allzeit ein Politicum ..." Aspekte zur cisleithanischen Bildungsgeschichte 1848‒1918

 Peter Urbanitsch: "... das Schulwesen ist und bleibet allzeit ein Politicum ..." Aspekte zur cisleithanischen Bildungsgeschichte 1848‒1918. Vienna: ÖAW 2025. ISBN 978-3-7001-9417-0

1848 setzte ein umfassender Modernisierungsprozess des Bildungswesens in der Habsburgermonarchie ein, dessen Auswirkungen bis in die Gegenwart erkennbar sind. Entsprechend dem liberal-aufklärerischen Ethos sollte das Bildungsniveau gehoben, der Einfluss der Kirche verringert, die Urteilsfähigkeit gestärkt, das eigenständige Denken angeregt und der Jugend ein an Kaiser und Reich orientierter Patriotismus eingeimpft werden. Die Vermittlung praktischer Kenntnisse sollte das wirtschaftliche Fortkommen ermöglichen. Das Reichvolksschulgesetz von 1869 brachte einen entscheidenden Aufschwung für das Primärschulwesen. Unmittelbar vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg wurden fast alle Volksschulkinder in der Muttersprache unterrichtet. Das Sprachenproblem spielte auch im höheren Schulwesen eine wichtige Rolle. Nicht allen Nationalitäten stand ein kompletter Bildungsweg „von der Wiege bis zur Bahre“ zur Verfügung. Die Gymnasien waren dem neuhumanistischen Bildungsideal verpflichtet. Dagegen trugen die Realschulen und die berufsbildenden Schulen den Erfordernissen eines neuen, von Naturwissenschaften und Technik geprägten Weltbildes Rechnung. Auch die Universitäten und anderen Hohen Schulen folgten diesem Trend. In vielen Fächern wurden Spitzenleistungen erzielt. Allerdings konnten nur sehr wenige junge Männer, und sehr spät und in noch geringerer Zahl junge Frauen, eine sekundäre oder tertiäre Bildungsanstalt besuchen. Umso bedeutsamer war das von der Zivilgesellschaft getragene, breit gefächerte Volksbildungswesen. Zwar wurden nicht überall die bereits 1848 formulierten Ziele erreicht, dennoch schufen die von Staat, Ländern, Gemeinden, Interessenvertretungen und der Zivilgesellschaft gesetzten Maßnahmen eine feste Basis zur Bewältigung der neuen Herausforderungen auch nach dem Ende der Habsburgermonarchie.

Tatiana Efrussi: Hannes Meyer: Soviet Architect.

 Tatiana Efrussi: Hannes Meyer: Soviet Architect. Life and Work in the USSR, 1930-1936. Vernon Press 2025. ISBN: ‎ 9798881901813

Swiss architect and urban planner, the second director of the Bauhaus Dessau, Hannes Meyer, spent about six years in the USSR-from 1930 to 1936. This book presents the first in-depth study of Hannes Meyer's activities during the years of early Stalinism. There is a global interest in this architect's legacy today, but his work can hardly be understood without a closer examination of the key chapter in his career.

This book is an attempt to challenge the usual Western-centered perspective and explore not only what Meyer could bring to the Soviet Union but also what he sought to learn there and how this interaction influenced his work and thinking. The somewhat provocative title underscores this thesis. A detailed reconstruction of his professional activities during this period was made possible through archival research in several countries (Russia, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and field trips across Russia. In the end, the narrative offers a glimpse into the Soviet architectural context of the 1930s-networks, hierarchies, behavioral strategies, theories, and interpretations of major polemical concepts such as "proletarian architecture" and "socialist realism." Among the projects for "socialist cities," Meyer was commissioned to create the urban plan for the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region in the USSR-Birobidzhan. The dedicated book chapter explores his involvement in the search for a distinct Soviet "Jewish style."

Hannes Meyer, the most controversial of the architects associated with the Bauhaus, was passionately involved in politics, and available documents indicate his desire to become a "Soviet architect" at all costs. The research allows us to view Meyer not only as a victim but also as an actor in the early Stalinist system based on violence.

Dr. Tatiana Efrussi is an architecture and art historian as well as an artist. She was born in Moscow and is currently based in Paris. Since 2010, she has been researching the influence of political ideas on architectural practice and urban realities in both Soviet and German contexts in the 20th century. In 2011, she graduated from the Department of Art History of the Moscow State Lomonosov University with a paper on connections between Bauhaus and the USSR. As a researcher at the Museum of the Moscow Architectural Institute (MARKhI), she curated the exhibition 'Bauhaus in Moscow' in 2012. Her doctoral research dedicated to Hannes Meyer's life in the USSR during the early Stalinist period was supported by the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund. She defended her in 2020 at the Department of Architectural Theory and Design, University of Kassel in Germany. In parallel, Efrussi continued her art practice and studies and, in 2021, graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris school.From 2018 to 2019, Efrussi collaborated with the 'Bauhaus Imaginista' project, initiated by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson. In 2019-2020, she worked as a research consultant for the traveling exhibition 'The City of Tomorrow', curated by Ruben Arevshatyan and Georg Schölhammer. Efrussi has published essays on topics including Hannes Meyer, the Bauhaus, Soviet architecture, and contemporary Russian urbanism in scholarly collections and magazines in Russia, Germany, and Switzerland.

CFP: History of Knowledge - Lund 10/2025

 CFP: History of Knowledge - Lund 10/2025, deadline 01.05.2025

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In November 2023, the first ever international History of Knowledge Conference was organized in Porto, bringing together experts from a wide range of historical research fields. Following this successful event, the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK) is proud to host the second international History of Knowledge Conference on 8–10 October, 2025.

In recent years, the history of knowledge has been established as a vibrant field within historical scholarship. The History of Knowledge Conference aims to gather scholars from different backgrounds to continue to develop the field of history of knowledge and inspire international collaboration.

History of Knowledge Conference

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The Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK) will host the second international History of Knowledge Conference on 8–10 October, 2025.

We welcome papers and panels on any period, region and topic, as long as they are clearly related and relevant to the history of knowledge. However, we particularly encourage the submission of papers and panels that tie in with one or several of the six research focus areas at LUCK:

- history of the humanities

- everyday knowledge

- early modern knowledge societies

- postwar knowledge societies

- knowledge and education

- digitisation, historical scholarship and circulation of knowledge

and/or the submission of papers and panels that

- contribute to further developing (empirically, methodologically, theoretically or otherwise) the analytical concepts that have been crucial in shaping the history of knowledge as a field (these include, for example, the circulation of knowledge, knowledge actors, knowledge institutions, forms of knowledge, infrastructures of knowledge, formats of knowledge, knowledge societies, orders of knowledge and hierarchies of knowledge).

Keynote Speakers:

Robert Darnton (Harvard University): Title TBA

Susanne Schmidt (Berlin): Title TBA

More information: https://newhistoryofknowledge.com/2025/02/17/the-history-of-knowledge-conference/.

Nicoleta Roman , Beatrice Zucca Micheletto (eds.) Women, Migration and the Exchange of Knowledge from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century: Connecting Europe, Reintegrating the East

 Nicoleta Roman , Beatrice Zucca Micheletto (eds.) Women, Migration and the Exchange of Knowledge from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century: Connecting Europe, Reintegrating the East. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2025. ISBN 978-3-031-73981-1

About this book

This book examines female migration between Eastern and Western Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Bringing together contributions from scholars working in diverse disciplines, the book focuses on the social, economic, and cultural exchanges between migrants and the inhabitants of their host countries, arguing that women were central to these interactions due to their commercial, artisanal, and intellectual skills. The chapters shed light on the various roles and professions that women undertook when migrating across Europe, providing case studies of governesses, domestic servants and caregivers, traders and merchants, doctors and scholars, and emphasising how these roles shaped their identities. The authors illustrate how social mobility was engendered by skilled migration and academic mobility, whilst also illuminating the prejudices and challenges that faced women as they attempted to integrate into their new host societies alongside their families. Taking a comparative approach to explore the experiences of migrants across a range of countries in Europe, and over a vast period from the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires up until today, this collection provides insights into the long history of migration between Eastern and Western Europe.

Nicoleta Roman is a researcher at the ‘Nicolae Iorga’ Institute of History of the Romanian Academy and at New Europe College- Institute for Advanced Study, both in Bucharest, Romania. Her research interests revolve around social and economic history, gender and the history of women and children in (pre)modern Romania and Southeastern Europe.

Beatrice Zucca Micheletto is a researcher in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society  at the University of Turin, Italy where she teaches Economic History of Migration. Her research focuses on economic and social history, women and gender history, migration history and labour history of early modern and modern Europe inItaly and France.

CHORUS & hps.cesee global book talk: Soviet SCI_BERIA

 CHORUS & hps.cesee global book talk: Soviet SCI_BERIA. Thursday, April 24, 10:00 am ET / 16:00 CET / 17:00 Kyiv, Zoom.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Virtual platforms CHORUS (Colloquium for the History of Russian and Soviet Science) & HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) are inviting you to the forthcoming discussion of a new book on the history of Soviet science cities. Katja Doose and Ivan Boldyrev will join Ksenia Tatarchenko to comment on her recent book: Soviet SCI_BERIA: The Politics of Expertise and the Novosibirsk Scientific Center [1], in a discussion moderated by Slava Gerovitch.

Thursday, April 24, 10:00 am ET / 16:00 CET / 17:00 Kyiv, Zoom.

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the Zoom link, please register here: https://forms.gle/cikxo7tqhDXwSh7b9 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com.

[1] Soviet SCI_BERIA: The Politics of Expertise and the Novosibirsk Scientific Center. London: Bloomsbury Academic 2024.

“At first glance, the Novosibirsk Scientific Center, or Akademgorodok, appears as an outlier in academic excellence. This 'science city' is renowned for a preeminent university, dozens of research institutes, and a thriving technopark. At home, it is an emblem of Russian innovation; abroad, it is often portrayed as a potential threat, a breeding ground of cyber soldiers. Though Siberia has been the main source of post-1991 Russian carbon revenues, its soviet history and cold war legacy of internationalism demonstrates that territorial and scientific dimensions interlocked the moment the Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was created in 1957.

Drawing on a wide range of previously unexplored archives, Soviet SCI_BERIA focuses on how the post-Stalinist Siberia was redefined and represented through the ideal of rational development, the late socialist innovation practices, and the relationship between experts and the state. It offers a fresh insight into the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet Akademgorodok. In doing so, Tatarchenko not only fosters a conversation between history, area studies, and science studies but also sheds new light on Soviet modernity and the limits of its transformative projects.”

Participants

Ivan Boldyrev is a philosopher and an historian of ideas, with interests in economics, German idealism, sociology of knowledge, and critical theory. He currently works as assistant professor of history and philosophy of economics at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His most recent publications are (co-edited, with Till Düppe) Economic Knowledge in Socialism, 1945-1989, Annual Supplement to History of Political Economy. Duke University Press, 2019, and Die Ohnmacht des Spekulativen: Elemente einer Poetik von Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes.“ Wilhelm Fink, 2021. More information https://ivanboldyrev.net/about.html

Katja Doose is an environmental historian and a historian of science for Russia and the Soviet Union at the University of Lyon and Fribourg. Her research focuses on the history of Russian and Soviet earth science and the experiences of human-nature interactions from the late 19th to the 20th century. She is currently working on her book manuscript entitled "White Coal for white gold. An environmental history of glacier studies in Central Asia". She leads the SNF project "Myths of equality. A gendered history of science in Central Asia, 1870-1970" (2024-2027).  More information: https://www.unifr.ch/directory/en/people/334449/232f7

Ksenia Tatarchenko is a specialist in late Soviet history and the Cold War history of computing and AI. She has taught in the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore, and works currently at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore. She received her Ph.D. from the History of Science Program, History Department, Princeton University (2013). Her dissertation “A House with the Window to the West: The Akademgorodok Computer Center, 1958-1993” was awarded the Charles Babbage Institute 2012-2013 Erwin & Adelle Tomash Fellowship. Her publications include “Algorithm’s Cradle: Commemorating al-Khwarizmi in the Soviet History of Mathematics and Cold War Computer Science,” Osiris 38, 2023, pp. 286-304 and (co-edited, with Grégory Dufaud) Les vies de la science sous le socialisme tardif, 1945-1991. Special issue of Cahiers d’histoire russe, est-européenne, caucasienne et centrasiatique 63/1, 2022. More information: https://smu-sg.academia.edu/KseniaTatarchenko

Slava Gerovitch teaches history of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He holds two PhDs: one in philosophy of science (from the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology in Moscow) and one in history and social study of science and technology (from MIT's Science, Technology and Society Program). He has written extensively on the history of Soviet mathematics, cybernetics, cosmonautics, and computing. He is the author of From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (2002), Voices of the Soviet Space Program (2014), and Soviet Space Mythologies (2015). More information: https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage

Stephan Rindlisbacher. Borders in Red: Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union.

Stephan Rindlisbacher. Borders in Red: Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2025.  ISBN: 978-1-5017-8053-0.

Borders in Red shows how Lenin and his Bolshevik leadership embraced the nationality question as a way of managing diversity and institutionalized it as a means of governance. Stephan Rindlisbacher uses the making of national borders as a lens through which to examine the Bolsheviks' fundamental shift from proletarian internationalism to ethnonational federalism sui generis. Comparing how party and state managed issues of national diversity in the core regions of Soviet federalism—Ukraine, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia—Rindlisbacher provides insights into their policymaking and into the roots of current territorial conflicts.

President Putin has condemned Lenin's nationality policy to be a historical mistake, and with its war against Ukraine, Russia has tried to revise borders that date back to the early days of the Soviet state. However, Borders in Red shows that the Soviet Republics were not arbitrarily divided by leaders like Stalin or Khrushchev. They were the result of long-lasting debates involving politicians, experts, and people from the border regions. The developing Soviet order was a product of trial and error.

CFP: Aristokratie und Naturwissenschaft - Prag 06/2025

 CFP: Aristokratie und Naturwissenschaft - Prag 06/2025

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Die DGGTB lädt am 22.06.2025 zu ihrer 33. Jahrestagung in das Nationaltechnische Museum Prag ein. Das Tagungsthema widmet sich der Rolle der Aristokratie in der Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaften.

Aristokratie und Naturwissenschaft

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Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Theorie der Biologie e. V. (DGGTB), 170 78 Prag (Czech Republic)

22.06.2025

Bewerbungsschluss: 30.04.2025

Ob als aktive Forscher, begeisterte Sammler oder großzügige Förderer wissenschaftlicher Institutionen und Entdeckungsreisen die Aristokratie prägte die Wissenschaften auf vielfältige Weise. Die Tagung lädt zu Vorträgen ein, die sich mit der Bedeutung adeliger Netzwerke, Schirmherrschaften und Sammlungen für die Wissensproduktion befassen und die Auswirkungen dieser Faktoren auf wissenschaftliche Debatten und Praktiken untersuchen.

Zentrale Fragestellungen können sein:

1. Adelige als Forscher Forscher als Adelige

Zahlreiche Adelige engagierten sich aktiv in der Forschung und leisteten bedeutende Beiträge zur Entwicklung der verschiedenen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen. Gleichzeitig wurden viele Forscher aufgrund ihrer herausragenden Leistungen in verschiedenen Ländern in den Adelsstand erhoben. zwischen Aristokratie und Wissenschaft wirft interessante Fragen auf: Wie lässt sich dieses Phänomen anhand konkreter Beispiele untersuchen? Welche relevanten prosopographischen Analysen existieren zu diesem Thema? Welche spezifischen Merkmale und Besonderheiten sind in diesem Kontext hervorzuheben?

2. Förderung, Mäzenatentum, Schirmherrschaft

Viele Adelsfamilien traten als bedeutende Förderer der Wissenschaft und Forschung in Erscheinung. Ihre Rolle war häufig nicht nur symbolisch, sondern auch von praktischer Bedeutung. Welche bemerkenswerten Beispiele lassen sich in diesem Zusammenhang anführen? Welches Ausmaß und welche Relevanz hatten sie in der jeweiligen Wissenschaftspolitik? Darüber hinaus stellt sich die Frage, welche Traditionslinien bis in die Gegenwart erkennbar sind.

3. Sammlungen und Institutionen

Durch die Förderung des Adels konnten bedeutende Sammlungen, insbesondere an königlichen Höfen, sowie Institutionen, die inzwischen Tradition haben, gegründet werden. Wie ist dieser Zusammenhang historisch zu bewerten? Welche Rolle spielten diese Sammlungen beispielsweise für die spätere museale Praxis? In welcher Weise wurden sie wissenschaftlich aufgearbeitet und bearbeitet?

4. Reisen und Entdeckungen

Dank ihrer finanziellen Ressourcen nahmen Adelige im 19. Jahrhundert an den Welt und Entdeckungsreisen teil, was der Wissenschaft in vielerlei Hinsicht zugutekam. Dabei sind jedoch bei der Überführung von Objekten auch grundlegende ethische Fragen aufgeworfen worden. Wie lässt sich der Beitrag des Adels zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte in diesem Kontext analysieren?

5. Ökonomisierung der Erkenntnisse

Der Großgrundbesitz stellte einen spezifischen Rahmen für das Testen, Entwickeln und Implementieren neuer neuer Arbeitsmethoden dar. Besonders in der Landwirtschaft und im Forstwesen wurden rationalisierte Methoden erprobt und angewandt. Welche Traditionslinien lassen sich hier in einer historischen Perspektive erkennen? Wie gestaltete sich der Austausch von Informationen und Erfahrungen, und welche Relevanz haben diese , und welche Relevanz haben diese Aspekte in der heutigen Zeit? Aspekte in der heutigen Zeit?

6. Tradition und Weltanschauung

Durch ihre überwiegend konservative Position in der Politik und ihre öffentliche Amtsausübung konnten Adelige maßgeblich die weltanschaulichen Debatten und Positionierungen ihrer Zeit beeinflussen. Welchen Einfluss hatten diese Einstellungen auf die Einführung und Durchsetzung neuer Denkrichtungen, wie der Evolutionstheorie?

Zur Bewerbung: Besonders erwünscht sind Beiträge, die mehrere Aspekte des Themas zusammenführen. Die Tagungssprachen sind Deutsch und Englisch. Für die Tagung sind für die einzelnen Vorträge im Umfang von 15 bis 20 Minuten mit anschließender Diskussion (5 bis 10 Minuten) vorgesehen.

Themenvorschläge im Umfang von ca. 2 000 Zeichen (inkl. Leerzeichen) werden bis zum 30. April 2025 erbeten an: Dr . Karl Porges, Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena, E Mail: karl.porges@uni jena.de (Postanschrift: Am Steiger 3, 07743 Jena). Bitte teilen Sie auch einige kurze Angaben zu Ihrer Person (Funktion, Wirkungsstätte) mit. Die Rückmeldung über die Annahme oder Ablehnung des Vorschlags erfolgt voraussichtlich bis zum 15. Mai 2025.

Die Beiträge der Jahrestagung können nach Begutachtung im 29. Band der Verhandlungen zur Geschichte und Theorie der Biologie (Springer-Verlag) veröffentlicht werden.

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karl.porges@uni-jena.de

call for papers: Vladimír Karbusický (1925–2002): An Academic at the Crossroads of Disciplines and Ideologies

 call for papers: Vladimír Karbusický (1925–2002): An Academic at the Crossroads of Disciplines and Ideologies

The year 2025 marks the centennial of the birth of Czech musicologist and ethnologist Vladimír Karbusický (1925–2002). Karbusický’s active and prolific career spanned several decades and reflected the changing landscape and the paradoxes of Czechoslovak socialist-era social sciences and humanities. In the 1950s, Karbusický began as a folklorist in the newly established Academy of Sciences and participated in a large ideologically influenced research project focused on the mining region around Kladno. The Khrushchev thaw allowed him to seek inspiration in trends outside the Eastern Block, and Karbusický began to establish himself in international scholarly networks. His interests ranged from musicology to aesthetics, folklore, semiotics, history, sociology, and philosophy. This period ended with the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the publication of his iconoclastic book on Lenin’s theory of reflection. The situation made Karbusický emigrate to West Germany where he was appointed a professor at the University of Hamburg. After the fall of socialism in 1989, he regularly returned to his home country and established collaborations with Czech institutions.

Following Karbusický’s career footsteps and using him as an example, we invite scholars to join us in exploring some of the pertinent issues of the twentieth-century social sciences and humanities in Central Europe. We would like to focus on the following themes:

Karbusický, his life and work;

Interdisciplinarity between musicology, ethnology, and beyond;

Clashes between individual ambitions and the socialist institutions;

The many guises of politics in socialist-era scholarship;

The crossing of the Iron Curtain and the growing internationalization in the social sciences after the 1950s; and

Émigré scholars and their relationships to their home countries.

Conference dates: November 7–8, 2025

Conference venue: Musicological Library of the Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Puškinovo náměstí 9, 160 00 Prague

Submission guidelines: Please send your abstract of max. 1800 characters/250 words to Matěj Kratochvíl (kratochvil@eu.cas.cz) and Václav Kapsa (kapsa@udu.cas.cz) by May 30, 2025. You will be notified about the selection of submissions in June 2025. We expect the final papers to be 20 minutes long. The language of the conference will be English.

The conference is organized by the Institute of Ethnology and the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Download pdf here (https://www.eu.avcr.cz/export/sites/eu/.content/files/cfp_karbusicky.pdf).

online seminar in environmental history of Eastern Europe and Eurasia with Rikki Brown giving a talk about Georgian winemaking

 The next ESEH online seminar in environmental history of Eastern Europe and Eurasia will take place on April 15, 16:00 CET, with Rikki Brown giving a talk about Georgian winemaking and Daniela Ana as a discussant. Please register to get the Zoom-link and invite others who might be interested https://forms.gle/epGRgzg9umrqywW38

CFP: Between Tradition and Innovation: Universities as Places of Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Foundations of Modern Knowledge Societies

 CFP: Between Tradition and Innovation: Universities as Places of Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Foundations of Modern Knowledge Societies - Praha, 11/2025

Universities have always been central hubs of knowledge production, dissemination, and transformation. From their emergence as scholastic institutions in the Middle Ages, they have constantly navigated the tension between tradition and innovation. In this dynamic process of continuity and change, universities have played a crucial role in shaping intellectual progress while simultaneously being influenced by profound social, political, and technological transformations.

A particular emphasis is placed on European universities in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, epochs of profound transformation that laid the foundations for modern knowledge societies. Also welcome are contributions dealing with later periods.

The Atelier Héloïse Workshop in Prague explores the challenges universities face as actors in knowledge spaces, situated at the intersection of tradition and innovation. The focus lies on understanding the factors that have shaped universities as centres of intellectual exchange, institutional adaptation, and global networking. The workshop examines how universities and their members have responded to external challenges and opportunities, whether through successful adaptation or failed strategies.

Incorporating insights from digital history, the workshop also aims to explore how new digital tools and methods can deepen our understanding of the historical development of universities and their impact on knowledge societies.

Among other things, contributions are welcome dealing with:

1) Universities as centres of knowledge (intellectual practices, knowledge production, changes in the structure of knowledge, the ways of communicating knowledge to students, developing methodologies)

2) Universities within social, political, and technological transformations and their reaction to these processes (successful or failed adaptations, the causes of both these phenomena, etc.)   

3) Ways of knowledge dissemination and circulation (literary production, other types of dissemination via various media, correspondence, etc.)

Submission Guidelines

If you are interested in participating in the event, please submit a paper proposal in English by 15th May 2025 to cisar-brown@hiu.cas.cz. Your submission should include a 300–500 word abstract and a brief CV (maximum one page); you will be notified about the result by the end of June. The conference will be in English. The organising committee reserves the right to select papers.

Selected papers may be considered for publication in an edited volume.

We look forward to your submissions and an engaging discussion on the historical trajectories of universities as knowledge spaces!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr Lucy Císař Brown: cisar-brown@hiu.cas.cz

Bartłomiej Perlak, Grzegorz Strauchold, Jerzy Korczak, Rafał Nowakowski: Od izolacji do resocjalizacji. 100 lat historii więziennictwa w niepodległej Polsce [From isolation to rehabilitation. 100 years of prison history in independent Poland]

 Bartłomiej Perlak, Grzegorz Strauchold, Jerzy Korczak, Rafał Nowakowski: Od izolacji do resocjalizacji. 100 lat historii więziennictwa w niepodległej Polsce [From isolation to rehabilitation. 100 years of prison history in independent Poland]. Wroclaw: WUW 2025. ISBN 9788322939130

Więzienia i kara pozbawienia wolności towarzyszą społeczeństwom od starożytności, jednak sposób ich wykonywania zmieniał się z upływem czasu. Polski system penitencjarny przeszedł fundamentalne zmiany po odzyskaniu przez Rzeczpospolitą niepodległości po zaborach.

7 i 8 lutego 1919 roku Naczelnik Państwa Józef Piłsudski wydał dwa dekrety o organizacji więziennictwa w odrodzonej  Polsce. Na ich podstawie określono kompetencje Służby Więziennej, która została poddana rygorom wojskowym, a więzienia trafiły pod zarząd Ministerstwa Sprawiedliwości. Od tego momentu system penitencjarny przeszedł długą drogę, podlegając zmianom wynikającym z przemian ustrojowych przed i po drugiej wojnie światowej.

Od izolacji do resocjalizacji. 100 lat historii więziennictwa w niepodległej Polsce to książka, która szczegółowo ukazuje tę transformację. Autorzy analizują zmiany w przepisach prawa oraz ideologiczne przekształcenia, które wpływały na funkcjonowanie instytucji penitencjarnych. Opisują stosowany pierwotnie, tradycyjny model izolacyjno-represyjny oraz rosnącą stopniowo rolę resocjalizacji.

Dzięki interdyscyplinarnemu podejściu, łączącemu historię, prawo i socjologię, powstało studium, które kompleksowo omawia problematykę więziennictwa i wykonywania kary pozbawienia wolności w Polsce w XX wieku. Jest ono także próbą znalezienia odpowiedzi na pytanie o przyszłość polskiego więziennictwa, dążącego do równowagi między karą a resocjalizacją.

Książka Od izolacji do resocjalizacji. 100 lat historii więziennictwa w niepodległej Polsce. Wybrane aspekty to zestaw artykułów naukowych poświęconych różnym aspektom funkcjonowania systemu więziennictwa w Polsce po roku 1918. Jest to udany zbiór, przybliżający meandry funkcjonowania więziennictwa na ziemiach polskich w XX wieku. Każdy z tekstów przyczynia się do poszerzenia stanu wiedzy o uwarunkowaniach polityki penitencjarnej w omawianym okresie oraz czynnikach wpływających na jej formułę. Od prezentacji warunków architektoniczno-urbanistycznych do praktycznego funkcjonowania systemu więziennictwa w okresie II wojny światowej i w latach Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej.

Z recenzji prof. dr. hab. Piotra Mickiewicza,

Uniwersytet Gdański

Monografia pod redakcją J. Korczaka, R. Nowakowskiego, B. Perlaka i G. Straucholda nie jest jedynie kolejną publikacją na temat historii więziennictwa w Polsce w ciągu ostatnich 100 lat. Ma ona szczególny walor poznawczy, gdyż prezentuje w ujęciu interdyscyplinarnym zarówno historyczny, jak i polityczny, społeczny, kulturowy oraz prawny wymiar polityki penitencjarnej na ziemiach polskich. Publikacja, która prezentuje dorobek teoretyków i praktyków, doskonale oddaje dynamikę zmian wywołanych kolejnymi transformacjami ustrojowymi i wydarzeniami wojennymi, ilustrując jednocześnie potężne wyzwania, jakie procesy te postawiły przed służbą więzienną i samymi osadzonymi. Jest to wciągająca lektura nie tylko dla historyków, ale również prawników, socjologów i wszystkich czytelników zainteresowanych problematyką polskiego więziennictwa.

Z recenzji dr. hab. Macieja Cesarza,

Uniwersytet Wrocławski

Call for Papers: Masterclass "Truth Politics between Science and Society (1960s– today)"

  Call for Papers: Masterclass "Truth Politics between Science and Society (1960s– today)"

Where: University of Erfurt, Germany

When: July 10, 2025

Deadline for submissions: April 30, 2025

In light of a dwindling public trust in science (Oreskes 2019) and ambiguous calls for a ‘return to truth’ (Cain et al. 2019), understanding the relationship between science and a democratic public, the delineation of appropriate scientific practices, and how to reconcile conflicting interpretations of reality seems to be more relevant than ever. From 1960s counterculture to the 1990s Science Wars and up to todays’ (sometimes even official governmental) anti-intellectualism, academic, political, and epistemological debates have been closely interlinked. With a focus on the Science Wars, the masterclass aims to map and historicize the shifting epistemological landscapes from an international perspective informed by methods of Historical and Political Epistemology.

The masterclass is part of the workshop “Truth Politics between Science and Society. Political Epistemologies of the 1990s Science Wars” (July 8-9, 2025). It will be led by Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), Bernhard Kleeberg (Erfurt University), and Anja Laukötter (Friedrich Schiller University Jena). We invite early career researchers (Master and PhD students) to explore historical debates at the nexus of truth, science, and society.

In line with the perspective of Historical and Political Epistemology, the following questions might be worth considering:

- What were the socio-political effects of deploying scientific concepts, rhetorics, and arguments (e.g. truth, objectivity, rationalism, the scientific method, academic freedom) in particular historical contexts?

- What kind of political and social imaginations about the future of science and the (democratic) public informed these different positions?

- What kinds of subjectivities and narratives about science and society were re-/asserted?

In particular, we invite paper proposals with an international and transnational perspective on the reception of the Science Wars and related debates, as well as similar struggles that played out in different academic cultures and national contexts. Moreover, the role of new channels of communication and media, and how they shaped debates in public-academic arenas represent an important topic to explore.

We invite early career researchers to send a short CV, and a 300-word abstract of their research to forschungsstelle.wahrheit@uni-erfurt.de. The deadline for submission is April 30, 2025. Applicants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal by mid-May. Accepted participants are required to send in their full paper (about 20 pages) by June 16, 2025. All papers will be pre-circulated and constitute compulsory reading for the masterclass.

The masterclass is jointly organized by the research center “Politics of Truth/Political Epistemologies” at the University of Erfurt, the Lumina Quaeruntur project "'Images of science' in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945-1968”, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS Prague, and the GWMT-working group “Political Epistemologies of Central and Eastern Europe” (PECEE). The masterclass will take place at the University of Erfurt, Germany. We will cover travel and accommodation costs for accepted participants.

Organizing Committee:

Martin Babička, D.Phil., Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

Johanna Hügel, History of Science, University of Erfurt

Erik Kaiser, M.A., History of Science, University of Erfurt

Meike Katzek, M.A., History of Science, University of Erfurt

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kleeberg, History of Science, University of Erfurt

Dr. Jan Surman, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

Call for papers: Gender, nature and ecology. (Re)thinking the trajectories of ecofeminism from a transnational European perspective

 Call for papers: Gender, nature and ecology. (Re)thinking the trajectories of ecofeminism from a transnational European perspective, for European Journal of Women's Studies

Ecofeminism, which emerged in the mid-1970s and 1980s as a field of transnational thought and activism, seems to have been redeveloped over the last decade in response to the ecological crisis. France has witnessed a kind of ‘ecofeminism boom’ to which the publication of Émilie Hache’s anthology Reclaim, recueil de textes écoféministes (2016) made a prominent contribution. Ecofeminist approaches have also (re)gained attention in Germany (Gottschlich/Hackfort/Schmitt/von Winterfeld 2022; Holland-Cunz 2014), in Belgium (Zitouni, 2019; Grandjean, 2024), in Spain (Mediavilla and Echavarren, 2021; Puelo, 2017), as well as in Southeastern Europe (Đurđević and Marjanić, 2024). This non-exhaustive overview reveals that despite this spread of literature, which has undoubtedly enabled Anglophone traditions to be historicised and discussed, the transnational and micro-regional circuits of the production and reception of European ecofeminism are still relatively undocumented.

This issue is an invitation to rethink ecofeminism from European perspectives and perspectives from ‘Europe Otherwise’ or ‘Europe as a creolized space’ (Boatcă, 2020). We invite submissions that examine the ways in which ecofeminist theory is currently discussed in Europe, and how, in this pluralistic context, the respective traditions of ecofeminist thought, and politics are constituted, re-articulated, criticised and transformed.

We welcome abstracts that address any of the following, or other related questions:

1.

Articulations of the concepts of nature and gender

● What are the theoretical challenges and reformulations of the concept of nature? How do they avoid the naturalisation of social structures while accounting for an adequate understanding of the materiality of the non-human world?

● Does ecofeminism renew existing theoretical debates on the concepts of nature, gender and ecology? Conversely, what are the debates and tensions brought to light by the theoretical categories employed in ecofeminist writings?

● How are colonial dimensions of the ecological disaster reflected in various ecofeminist traditions and what are the remaining open questions and blind spots?

2.

Inter-/transnational trajectories

● Can we observe and investigate interests in ecofeminism in differentiated ways across European contexts?

● In what ways and via which trajectories have local forms of ecofeminism been construed?

● How does the production, circulation and reception of ecofeminism in different contexts shape or transform ecofeminist theorisations? And, on the other hand, how can we understand the absence of ecofeminist circulation in some other contexts?

● How is ecofeminism theorised, conceptualised and discussed in academic fields such as gender studies, philosophy or political science and in various national and linguistic traditions?

3.

Practices and strategies of translation

● Does ecofeminism engage in specific translation practices and strategies? And if so, what do translations do to ecofeminism? Are there selections, absences, misunderstandings (Bourdieu, 2002) or even ‘betrayals’?

● Beyond textual translations, are there any circulations or transfers of debates, theories, concepts between academics, civil society activists and practitioners, and policy makers?

Abstracts should be submitted no later than Monday, 14 April 2025 to: gender.nature.ecology@gmail.com

Authors of the selected abstracts will be notified by Monday, 5 May 2025.

Full articles should be submitted online to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ejw no later than Friday, 31 October 2025.

All articles will be subject to the Journal’s customary peer review process. Articles should be prepared according to the guidelines for submission on the inside back cover of the print journal or at https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/EJW.

Occupations and the occupied: Agency, expertise, and patronage in wartime and postwar political cartographies. Thematic issue of Geografiska Annaler

Occupations and the occupied: Agency, expertise, and patronage in wartime and postwar political cartographies. Thematic issue of Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, Volume 107, Issue 1 (2025). Edited by Steven Seegel.

Full issue: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rgab20/107/1?nav=tocList

Seegel, S. (2025). Introduction: ‘Occupations and the occupied: agency, expertise, and patronage in wartime and postwar political cartographies’. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 107(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2025.2458905

Seegel, S. (2025). ‘Rescuing Ukrainian agency, expertise, and patronage: on the historical cartography of Ukraine and maps in times of war’. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 107(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2025.2458907

Megginson, T. (2025). ‘What belongs to the Czechoslovak nation’: geographers’ and mapmakers’ visions of Czechoslovakia before the Paris Peace Conference. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 107(1), 16–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2025.2461778

Nekola, P. (2025). Genuine inquiry and human agency under occupation: lessons from the history of geographic and cartographic reasoning. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 107(1), 29–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2025.2462290

Svatek, P. (2025). Academic cartography in Vienna 1939–1945: actors, funders and political context. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 107(1), 45–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2025.2461772

Call for papers: Historical Perspectives on Infant Care and Child Education

Call for papers:  Historical Perspectives on Infant Care and Child Education. Emmi Pikler, Infant Homes, and the Politics of Child Welfare in 20th Century Hungary

The Conference is organized in collaboration with CEU Democracy Institute,

Österreichische Kulturforum Budapest and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Kriegsforschung.

This conference aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on the historical and political

dimensions of infant care, child welfare, and family policies in 20th-century Hungary. The

conference will examine the political, social, cultural, and gender dynamics that shaped child-

rearing practices and state interventions in family life. Understanding the professionalization

of childcare requires examining developments from WWI to the present day. This allows for

an examination of the diverse political and ideological regimes that have shaped the childcare

field, as well as the memory politics that continue to influence its trajectory. In this way,

particular emphasis is placed on the life and work of Emmi Pikler (1902–1984), a doctor and

childcare specialist who influenced the evolution of infant care in post-WWII Hungary and

established a highly successful international organization. Although Pikler was one of the most

influential childcare experts in socialist Hungary, her life and work remain largely unexplored

from an interdisciplinary perspective.

We invite researchers, historians, sociologists, psychologists, child welfare and care

professionals to examine the historical development of infant and child care in Hungary, with

a particular focus on Emmi Pikler’s work and the role of infant homes (csecsemőotthonok) in

shaping child protection policies and the care of young children by families. The objective is

to illuminate how child protection systems were shaped by social necessities and political

aspirations, offering invaluable insights into the contemporary challenges in child welfare

policy. Presentations that explore the political implications of child welfare policies, the

interplay between government and society in child welfare, care, and protection, and the impact

of ideologies on childcare systems are highly encouraged.

We welcome proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Emmi Pikler’s Contributions and Political Context

Examination of Emmi Pikler’s work in the broader political and social context of 20th-century

Hungary, including her influence on national child welfare and child protection policies and

the support or resistance from political actors. The role of the „Lóczy” in sheltering the hidden

infants of political prisoners in the 1950s.

The Functioning of Infant Homes and State Intervention

Historical analysis of how infant homes (csecsemőotthonok) were established and operated,

focusing on the political motivations behind state intervention in family and child welfare,

including the role of public institutions and the changing structure of out-of-home care of

children from dominantly family-based foster care to institutional care.

Child-Rearing Ideologies

Exploration of how political ideologies (such as nationalism, socialism, or conservatism),

traditions, and beliefs shaped child-rearing practices, especially concerning state-supported

institutions for infant care and family-based care of young children.

Health and Welfare Policies in a Political Lens

Investigating the intersection between child health policies, welfare programs, and broader

political agendas. How have political regimes from post-WWI Hungary to the present

influenced healthcare, education, and welfare reforms for children and families?

Nation-Building and Childcare

The role of child-rearing practices and child protection policies in nation-building efforts,

including how children were seen as future citizens and how infant care became part of political

discourse on national strength and identity.

Women’s Roles and Gender Politics

The role of women, particularly mothers and caregivers, in the political discourse surrounding

family and childcare. How did gender politics intersect with state policies on child welfare, and

what have been the expectations placed on women influencing current policies and practices?

How have professional and academic women influenced perceptions, policies, and practices,

with particular attention to research and programs related to children, families, and women's

roles?

The Politics of Poverty and Child Neglect

The state’s approach to dealing with child poverty and neglect including political debates

around state, community versus family, and parental responsibility for children’s welfare and

well-being. How did social class and political ideologies shape policies towards impoverished

families and orphaned or abandoned children?

Comparative Political Perspectives

Comparative studies of how political regimes in Hungary and other European countries

influenced establishing and managing infant homes and broader childcare policies.

Submission Guidelines

We invite individual papers or panel discussions. Proposals should include:

● Full name, institutional affiliation, and contact information of the presenter(s)

● Title of the presentation or panel

● Language of submission: Hungarian OR English

● A 300-word abstract outlining the research topic, methodology, and key findings or

arguments

● Any specific AV or other technical requirements

All proposals should be sent to Mária Herczog (herczogmaria@me.com), Andrea Pető

(petoa@ceu.edu) and Fanni Svégel (svegelfanni@gmail.com) as one Word (doc) or PDF file.

Panel proposals should be sent as one merged file.

Deadline for abstract submission: 1 May, 2025

Notification of acceptance: 15 June, 2025

Submission of papers: September 15, 2025

Conference dates: October 6-8, 2025, at CEU DI

For more information, see the project page (https://democracyinstitute.ceu.edu/emmi-pikler).

workshop for emerging scholars (M.A. students, Ph.D. students, and postdoctoral researchers) focusing on the study of contemporary East-Central and Southeastern Europe

 The Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is pleased to invite you to submit paper proposals for a workshop for emerging scholars (M.A. students, Ph.D. students, and postdoctoral researchers) focusing on the study of contemporary East-Central and Southeastern Europe. We are interested in novel sources and approaches that reinterpret traditional historical narratives of these regions.

We welcome submissions related to East-Central and Southeastern Europe from history and other historically-informed disciplines, such as political science, anthropology, sociology, and film and literary studies. Scholars from the regions of inquiry are especially encouraged to apply. We hope to create panels of scholars from diverse national and temporal subfields to discuss shared challenges and insights related to the use of different sources – including, but not limited to, oral histories, literary sources, government documents, photography, video, or material culture. We will accept papers on any topic. In their presentations, panelists will address the source base of their papers and their interpretations thereof.

The workshop is remote and will take place via Zoom on May 16, 2025. Participants will have 15–20 minutes to present their papers in English. Each presentation will be followed by comments from a discussant and questions from the audience.

Please send a short abstract (300 words) and a CV in English via this form. Proposals should briefly explain the paper’s source base and argument, as well as its contribution to the fields of East-Central and Southeastern European history. The deadline for submission is 11:59 pm EST on March 31, 2025.

Applicants will be informed of their status by April 7. Those accepted into the workshop will be asked to submit a complete paper by 11:59 p.m. EST on May 2, 2025. Please direct questions regarding the workshop to myself (ahuselja@email.unc.edu) and Mira Markham (miram@live.unc.edu).

CfP: Mobilizing Nature: The Environmental History of the Ottoman Danubian Frontier, Vienna, 12-13 March 2026

Call for papers: Mobilizing Nature: The Environmental History of the Ottoman Danubian Frontier, Vienna, 12-13 March 2026

The Danube, “le roi des fleuves de l’Europe” (the king of European rivers), as Napoleon Bonaparte called it, is the second longest river in Europe, surpassed by the Volga in Russia only. Originating from the Black Forests in Germany, it flows through or past ten Central and Southeastern European countries before it flows into the Black Sea. The Danube was a vital commercial and military shipping channel for the Ottomans. From the fourteenth century, they increasingly used the Danube as a waterway to move supplies and munition between the Black Sea and the Hungarian plains. Especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Danube was an inseparable part of Ottoman campaign logistics. It enabled the Ottomans to apply their military projections to Europe and contributed to their success in their military operations against the Habsburgs. 

Scholars have tracked the political, social, and economic consequences of the Ottoman military presence on the Danube, but less attention has been paid to its environmental repercussions. To fill this gap, the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna will host the “Mobilizing Nature: The Environmental History of the Danubian Frontier” workshop from 12 to 13 March 2026. Focusing on the Middle and Lower Danubian frontiers in the early modern period, it will explore the Danube River’s place and role in Ottoman warfare. The workshop aims to shed light on the relationship between the riverine environment, war and military in the early modern Ottoman Danube. It aims to bring together researchers working on the river’s military and environmental histories and those with a broader focus on river history. In this respect, it seeks to foster a cross-disciplinary conversation to build connections across fields and bring different perspectives to understand the establishment and maintenance of the Ottoman Danubian frontier in connection with the natural environment.

The participants are encouraged to engage in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary topics that deal with questions including, but not limited to, the following:

▪ How did the Ottomans expand their rule and establish and maintain their military frontier on the Danube River? 

▪ How did the Ottoman military engage with the Danubian environment? In what ways did environmental conditions, such as climate, landscape, flora, fauna, soil, and water, shape the character of Ottoman warfare? 

▪ How did military ideas, strategies, bodies, and institutions interact with nature in the Ottoman Danube? 

▪ How did they cope with the challenges posed by the Danube, such as shallows, whirlpools, and shifting islands? 

▪ How did the Ottoman military mobilize natural resources, such as timber, stone, sand, and ores, for their military ends? 

▪ What were the environmental consequences of the Ottoman military presence on the Danube? How did the militarization of Danubian landscapes affect human beings and other species? 

▪ What are the specificities of the militarized environments along the Ottoman Danube? How similar or different are they from other militarized environments in the Ottoman Empire and beyond? 

▪ How are the environmental histories of Ottoman battlefields linked? 

▪ How can methods and tools used in the digital and spatial humanities, such as historical GIS and creative geovisualization, offer alternative ways of telling stories about the Ottoman Danubian Frontier?

For the “Mobilizing Nature” workshop, we invite submissions that align with the workshop aims mentioned above. Please send your proposals of max. 300 words and short bios to Onur İnal (onur.inal@univie.ac.at) and Deniz Armağan Akto (deniz.armagan.akto@univie.ac.at) until 31 May 2025. 

Limited funding will be available to help cover travelling costs for individuals without institutional support. 

The workshop is part of the project “DANFront: An Environmental History of the EarlyModern Ottoman Military Frontier in the Middle and Lower Danube,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (PAT2459324). 

https://danfront.univie.ac.at/

In the spirit of continuing the rich dialogue and scholarly exchange from the Mobilizing Nature workshop, we intend to publish an edited collection on the innovative research presented at the workshop. The edited collection will seek to consolidate and extend the theoretical and conceptual insights generated by the workshop, providing a significant contribution to Ottoman military environmental history.

URL

https://danfront.univie.ac.at/workshop/

CHORUS & hps.cesee global book talk: Economic Knowledge in Crisis: Economists and the State in the Late Soviet Union

CHORUS & hps.cesee global book talk: Economic Knowledge in Crisis: Economists and the State in the Late Soviet Union. Thursday, April 10, 11:00 am ET / 17:00 CET / 18:00 Kyiv, Zoom.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Virtual platforms CHORUS (Colloquium for the History of Russian and Soviet Science) & HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) are inviting you to the forthcoming discussion of a new book on the history of Soviet economics. Ewa Dąbrowska and Ilya Matveev will join Olessia Kirtchik to comment on her recent book: Economic Knowledge in Crisis: Economists and the State in the Late Soviet Union [1], in a discussion moderated by Slava Gerovitch.

Thursday, April 10, 11:00 am ET / 17:00 CET / 18:00 Kyiv, Zoom.

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the Zoom link, please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/LInm1rrqSzqQFiI0muwJzw or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com

[1] Economic Knowledge in Crisis: Economists and the State in the Late Soviet Union. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2024.

“This book aims to shed new light on the puzzle of the late Soviet conversion to the “market” and capitalism by revisiting the history of Soviet reform economics. Using a variety of sources, including interviews with economists, archival files, and published materials, it examines the social contexts in which economists employed in economic administration and research institutions could have played a crucial public and political role, the forms of their participation, and the social and political logic behind the selection of economic experts and their rise to power during perestroika and the “transition” period. It also compares the professional trajectories of these reformist economists and assesses the scope of this group’s influence in the post-Soviet period in order to conclude on the new state of economic expertise in Russia.”

Participants

Ewa Dąbrowska is a Postdoc in the Cluster “Contestations of the liberal Script” and at the Institute for East European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. She obtained her PhD from the University of Amsterdam with the thesis on ideas and policy change in Putin’s Russia. Her current research focuses on alternatives to the liberal norms and institutions in the governance of the Internet, data and the digital economy in Russia and the Global South. More information https://www.scripts-berlin.eu/people/Dabrowska/index.html 

Olessia Kirtchik is a sociologist and CNRS researcher, specializing in the sociology of science and technology. She holds a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and has held academic positions in Russia, France, and Austria. Her research focuses on the history of cybernetics, AI, and the circulation of economic ideas. Notable publications include “The Soviet Scientific Programme on AI” (BJHS Themes, 2023) and “Computers for the Planned Economy” (Europe-Asia Studies, 2022). She is currently working on the IAction project, studying AI’s role in public administration in France. More information: https://cis.cnrs.fr/en/olessia_kirtchik/ 

Ilya Matveev is an independent Marxist researcher in Russian and international political economy. He is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and a member of the research group Public Sociology Laboratory. He is a founding editor of Openleft.ru. His recent publications include “From the Chicago Boys to Hjalmar Schacht: The Trajectory of the (Neo)Liberal Economic Expertise in Russia” (Problems of Post-Communism, 2024) and "When the Whole Is Less Than the Sum of Its Parts: Russian Developmentalism since the Mid-2000s." (Russian Politics 2023 with Oleg Zhuravlev). More information: https://berkeley.academia.edu/IlyaMatveev 

Slava Gerovitch teaches history of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He holds two PhDs: one in philosophy of science (from the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology in Moscow) and one in history and social study of science and technology (from MIT's Science, Technology and Society Program). He has written extensively on the history of Soviet mathematics, cybernetics, cosmonautics, and computing. He is the author of From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (2002), Voices of the Soviet Space Program (2014), and Soviet Space Mythologies (2015). More information: https://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage 

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Humanities and Natural Sciences in the Late Stalin Era

 CALL FOR PAPERS: The Humanities and Natural Sciences in the Late Stalin Era

The CUPOLA project (Culture’s Politics Under Authoritarian Rule: Soviet Civilizationism and the Case of the Humanities During the Stalin Era, 2024–2028) invites chapter proposals for the book project The Humanities and Natural Sciences in the Late Stalin Era. The deadline for abstracts is May 15, 2025, with notifications of acceptance sent by May 23, 2025. We invite abstracts for book chapters that offer novel perspectives on the humanities and natural sciences during the late Stalin era. To apply, please submit an abstract (maximum 500 words) and a CV (maximum two pages) to elina.viljanen@helsinki.fi.

Research on Stalin-era humanities and natural sciences has primarily focused on the political and ideological control exerted by the state. However, there is a scarcity of studies exploring the degrees of autonomy and submission within these fields. To address this gap, we propose examining the political strategies employed by scholars in Soviet humanities and natural sciences in their efforts to gain relative autonomy from Soviet political control. This approach is grounded in the understanding that, for political instrumentalization to be effective, it cannot entirely eliminate scholarly autonomy, as scholarship must remain useful for political purposes.

Our project seeks to explore the intersections between the political, cultural, and philosophical aspects of Soviet humanities and natural sciences. Our premise is that the political aspects of humanities and sciences are not reducible only to the active role they assume through their actors and ideas in conventional state driven politics. To address and test this premise, we introduce the methodological concept of culture’s politics, which refers to the struggle for power to define and govern one’s own cultural existence. In the context of the humanities and natural sciences, it is essential to ask: To what extent did scholars under Stalinism experience relative autonomy? What did autonomy entail, and why is this phenomenon significant? How should we conceptualize the late Stalin era in scholarship, particularly from the perspectives of the history of ideas and philosophy of science?

A seminar to discuss preliminary book chapters will be held at the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki on October 2–3, 2025. Online participation will be available, and the deadline for submitting draft chapters is September 22nd, 2025.

We kindly ask you to forward this Call for Papers to any individuals or groups who may be interested in contributing to this book project. For more information about the CUPOLA Project, please visit the ARGIH pages: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/russian-east-european-and-eurasian-intellectual-history/news/call-for-papers

 

Call for Articles: "Betrayal Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Treachery in Central Europe" (Střed/Centre 2/2025)

 Call for Articles: "Betrayal Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Treachery in Central Europe" (Střed/Centre 2/2025)

By early 2025, arguments about ‘betrayal’ have made a triumphant return to the domain of global politics, underscoring the emotive underpinnings of a particular US- and NATO-centric global order, particularly from the perspective of the Global North. At the same time, rhetoric from many of the main actors involved has operated with the concept of betrayal since nobody wants to betray the trust of the respective ‘nation’. This situation has evoked memories of historic betrayals, from the Munich Agreement to the Phoney War, from the Yalta Conference to the failure of the Budapest Memorandum, as well as individual betrayals both domestic and foreign. The resurgence of interest in treachery in Central Europe is in line with a number of historiographical trends since the 1990s. On the one hand, it is driven by a new generation of historians seeking to challenge post-socialist narratives with their black-and-white, national typologies. On the other hand, it is a reaction to the resurgence of such dualistic narratives in conservative and right-wing historiography. Concurrently, and not by chance, Julien Benda’s La trahison des clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals, orig. 1927) experienced a revival in the region, marking the return of yet another discourse on betrayal.

The present issue of the diamond open access journal Střed/Centre will contribute to this growing Central European debate on the histories of treachery and betrayal. Contributions are invited on the period from the onset of the 19th century to the present day, and the space stretching from Bregenz to Luhansk and from Dubrovnik to Tallinn. Comparative and transnational approaches are particularly welcome in this context.

Potential themes or questions to discuss are:

- What terms are used in the languages of Central Europe to discuss concepts of betrayal or treachery in a variety of historic political or personal contexts? Where does this language come from and how has it evolved?

- What criteria are used by governments or in the general public for evaluating treachery or betrayal? Which discourses and which emotional regimes do they relate to (social, cultural, gender, religious, colonial, national etc.)?

- How has the criteria employed in incidents of treachery changed over time? How has this affected the criteria for atonement? How far is atonement for treachery ever possible?

- Where and why have notorious figures of betrayal or treachery appeared or disappeared over the course of the last two centuries? How far have they involved new forms of collective identification in the Central European region (e.g. class, gender, ethnicity) in evolving forms of state or society?

- What happens when discourses about betrayal clash with each other? – e.g. different national perspectives (as in the 1938 ‘Munich betrayal’), or conflicts about betrayal on a more personal level such as adultery or oath-breaking.

- How and why are certain incidents or figures of treachery long-lasting? Who sustains these historic incidents in the public memory, and how are they reconfigured for new purposes in later decades by regimes or society?

- To what extent are there key sites or spaces in Central Europe which evoke memories of betrayal, treachery or treason? 

- How far do incidents or discourses about treachery have regional limits, or are they also transnational with some examples from Central Europe having an international resonance?

Please send a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words to the editors at stred@mua.cas.cz by April 10, 2025. Authors of accepted proposals will be expected to submit their full papers by October 1, 2025.

Information about the journal and the guidelines can be found in the “For Authors” section of the journal’s website: https://asjournals.lib.cas.cz/Stred/home?lang=en 

Languages of publication: English, Czech, Slovak, German