CFP: Democracy on the Edge: Science, Technology and Political Promise in Central and Eastern Europe, Panel at EASST 2026

 We invite submissions to the combined-format open panel:

Democracy on the Edge: Science, Technology and Political Promise in Central and Eastern Europe

EASST 2026 – Combined Format Open Panel (CB212), September 8-11, 2026, Kraków

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has long lived “on the edge” of empires, political cultures, economic systems, and ways of knowing. Today it again occupies a liminal position within global sociotechnical transformations—from energy transitions to digitalisation. Through a panel discussion and two paper-based workshops, Democracy on the Edge invites researchers from and beyond CEE to examine forms of life, value, and sociotechnical imaginaries at the edge.

Here, the edge functions both as metaphor and method: a site of instability, friction, and creativity with which to interrogate implicit norms of sociotechnical progress. The sessions draw on STS scholarship linking political cultures and institutions with science and technology (Sheila Jasanoff on co-production; Yaron Ezrahi on democracy and imagination; Kaushik Sunder Rajan and Adriana Petryna on citizenship), while engaging concepts deeply rooted in CEE experience—imitation, precarity, performance, and development.

We invite empirical (historical and contemporary) and theoretical contributions that reflect on transitions, the role of computing in CEE pasts and futures, and the (often failed or suspended) promises shaping regional imaginaries. Central themes include, but are not limited to:

1989 ↔ 2025: cyclical transitions, generational imaginaries, constitutional moments

Infrastructure: political, scientific, and technological layering over time

Geography and identity: borders, peripheries, rescaled belongings

Materialities of transition: from energy grids to neural networks

Temporal edges: anticipation, delay, suspension

The panel is open to scholars at all career stages. While grounded in Central and Eastern Europe, we encourage contributions that place CEE in comparative or global perspective, especially with other regions that share elements of the ‘democracy on the edge’ identity in today’s rapidly transforming techno-political realities, from Taiwan to India to the United States. 

Please note that, in order to make the paper-based workshops successful, accepted contributors are expected to share a draft of their paper with panel participants in advance of the conference. 

Abstracts due February 28, 2026. Panel details and submission link:https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easst2026/p/18260

We look forward to your submissions and to collectively exploring what it means to study democracy, science, and technology from the edge—without assuming the centre knows best.

Best regards,

Panel organizers:

Tadeusz Józef Rudek (Jagiellonian University)

Margarita Boenig-Liptsin (ETH Zürich)

Aleksandra Wagner (Jagiellonian University)

Sebastian Pfotenhauer (Technical University of Munich)

Anna Lytvynova (ETH Zürich)

Oliwia Mandrela (Jagiellonian University)

Alexander Wentland (Technical University of Munich)

Monika Wulz (Leuphana University)

Miroslav Vodrážka: Systémově zneužitá a zneužívající Československá psychiatrie v Soft-sovětském stylu (1948-1989) [Systemically abused and abusive Czechoslovak psychiatry in the Soft-Soviet style (1948-1989)].

 Miroslav Vodrážka: Systémově zneužitá a zneužívající Československá psychiatrie v Soft-sovětském stylu (1948-1989) [Systemically abused and abusive Czechoslovak psychiatry in the Soft-Soviet style (1948-1989)]. Muzeum paměti XX.století , Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů 2025. ISBN: 978-80-53066-04-4

Tato kritická studie dokládá na základě konkrétních dobových příkladů, že pojem „zneužívání psychiatrie“ je třeba definovat a pojímat v širším slova smyslu, a to zejména z hlediska jeho realizace v rámci totalitárního systému. Zároveň je i historickým příspěvkem k problému vyrovnání se s minulostí.

Dosavadní úzké chápání pojmu redukuje problém pouze na zneužívání odborných lékařských znalostí či tzv. „chybných diagnóz“, terapeutických postupů, účelových teorií a využívání lékařů-psychiatrů, kteří se stávali nástroji perzekuce vůči oponentům režimu. To ale nepostihuje a zejména nevysvětluje komplexně historický problém zneužívání československé psychiatrie v soft-sovětském stylu v letech 1948–1989, včetně otázky, proč se i někteří přední psychiatři stávali agenty Státní bezpečnosti a někteří z nich byli přímo řízeni sovětskou tajnou službou KGB.

New publication: Translation Studies before ‘Translation Studies’. Nothing happened?

 Translation Studies before ‘Translation Studies’. Nothing happened?

Edited by Kathryn Batchelor and Iryna Odrekhivska

UCL Press

Free download: https://bit.ly/4nglVku

*******************************************     

Translation Studies before ‘Translation Studies’ challenges the established historical narratives of ‘translation studies’ by showcasing some of the rich traditions of debate, research and theorising that happened around the world in the centuries prior to the supposed beginnings of the discipline. The volume includes selected extracts by scholars and translators from the ‘nothing happened’ period. Beginning in Ancient Rome, the volume moves through Medieval China and India, Early Modern Europe, the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Arab World and South America, before concluding with 20-century extracts from countries such as Brazil, Ukraine, Poland, China, Netherlands and Slovakia.

The extracts are accompanied by contextualising essays that explore the ideas presented in the context of their time, as well as providing a link between these writers and the concepts of post-1972 translation studies. All of the extracts were originally written in languages other than English and most make their debut here in English translation, amplifying the accessibility and significance of these previously overlooked contributions.

Call for panelists: Designing Progress: Arts, Sciences, and the State in Twentieth-Century CESEE

Call for panelists: Designing Progress: Arts, Sciences, and the State in Twentieth-Century CESEE, Call for panelists for a section at ASEEES 2026 in Chicago, November 12-15, 2026 (https://aseees.org/convention/2026-annual-convention/).

The history of the 'Long 20th Century' in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (CESEE) is often recounted through the prism of shifting borders and ideological ruptures. However, one consistent theme emerges throughout these decades: an unwavering belief in the transformative power of scientific rationality. From post-1918 reconstruction to technocratic dreams in the 1960s, science was not just an area of study, but also a guarantor of progress and a cornerstone of state legitimacy. At the same time, periods of political upheaval and reconstruction unsettled traditional borders within knowledge regimes and systems, allowing novel forms of cooperation and interchange to emerge. Notably, the prospect of becoming architects of modernity brought artists and scientists together in this period, as they cooperated and competed for epistemic primacy. While this history is mostly written from the perspective of the influence of new scientific discoveries on the arts, we posit that the exchange was frequently mutual and produced durable results, albeit sometimes only allowing exchange within short-lived 'trading zones'. It is these cross-fertilisations, collaborations and exchanges that our panel will focus on.

The panel will explore the evolving relationship between broadly defined sciences and arts, and the state, from interwar national experiments to post-war socialist transformations. Our aim is to examine how science — ranging from social physics and hygiene to cybernetics and nuclear physics — interacted with various artistic and literary fields. We are particularly interested in situations in which scientists and artists worked together, and in the interactions that occurred in these interdisciplinary spaces. 

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

- artistic-scientific collaborations in pursuit of efficiency, from interwar industrial management to the 1960s' fascination with systems theory and automated governance (architecture, urbanism, psychotechnics, etc.);

- architecture for science, from laboratory design to "big science" infrastructures (university campuses, "science cities", nuclear research facilities, etc.);

- imagining the future at the intersection of art, literature and science;

- interdisciplinary projects for the betterment of the state and its citizens (e.g. lifestyle planning, urbanism and aesthetics). 

- Arts, sciences and state security (e.g. camouflage research, propaganda and medical visual communication);

- Propagandistic exhibitions of science (e.g. hygiene and space exploration);

- Artists as scientists and scientists as artists.

Please send abstracts of 2,000 characters or less, to Jan Surman (surman@mua.cas.cz) and Michaela Šmidrkalová (smidrkalova@mua.cas.cz) by February 20, 2026. Please feel free to contact us with informal inquiries beforehand.

CfP “The Long Bohemian Reformation, European Universities, and Scholarly Disputations.”

 CfP for the XV International Symposium on the Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice: “The Long Bohemian Reformation, European Universities, and Scholarly Disputations.” Prague, 18–19 June 2026,  deadline January 31, 2026.

From the 14th century onward, European universities increasingly became key players in ecclesiastical reform. Academically trained scholars participated in Church councils, shaped theological discourse, and often played central roles in reformist movements. The Bohemian Reformation was deeply embedded in this academic environment—including Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague and later generations within the Unity of the Brethren and the Comenian circle.

For many key figures of the Bohemian Reformation, academic disputation – and the broader tradition of learned argumentation – was central to their intellectual activity. Its influence extended not only beyond the university setting – as in the debates on the Four Articles of Prague at the Council of Basel – but also beyond the Bohemian Reformation itself, as exemplified by the Leipzig Disputation and the Marburg Colloquy.

The symposium aims to investigate the intersections between the Bohemian Reformation and academic institutions, encompassing also its subsequent receptions. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role of scholarly disputations and intellectual traditions that contributed to the shaping of reformist thought.

The symposium’s broad scope accommodates both papers focused directly on the Bohemian Reformation as well as contributions in which the Bohemian Reformation forms one part of a larger mosaic.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

- Disputations concerning ecclesiastical, reformist, and religious issues related to the Long Bohemian Reformation

- Academic controversies, arguments, and rhetoric surrounding the Long Bohemian Reformation

- Underexplored or little-known textual sources of university and gymnasium origin related to the Long Bohemian Reformation

- Comparative analysis of surviving university and gymnasium manuscripts and prints related to the Long Bohemian Reformation with those from German, French, or British contexts

- Academic texts as sources for writings by reformist figures

- Negative stances toward universities and gymnasia in the writings of representatives of the Long Bohemian Reformation

- The role and manifestations of disputation in promoting reformist ideas within the Bohemian context

- Links of specific universities, academies, gymnasia, and gymnasia illustria to the Bohemian Long Reformation

- The impact of curriculum developments on the Bohemian Reformation (e.g. the influence of Melanchthon’s educational reforms via members of the Unity of the Brethren and Bohemian Protestants who studied in Wittenberg or Geneva)

- The significance of academic education among reformist figures

- Reception of the Bohemian Reformation at universities in the 19th and 20th centuries

- Links between the (Prague) university reform/reformers and other late medieval and early modern reform movements (e.g., monastic movements, lay reform).

Submission Guidelines:

Please send:

- Title and abstract (approximately 200–300 words)

- Institutional affiliation and contact details

to bohemian.reformation@gmail.com by 15 February 2026.

Applicants will be notified of the selection results by the end of February 2026.

Important Information:

Dates of the symposium: 18–19 June 2026

Location: Prague, Czech Republic; Academic Conference Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Husova 4a.

Languages: English, French

Fees: There is no fee for participation in the symposium.

Publication of contributions: A thematic volume based on the symposium is under consideration and depends on the submitted paper proposals. Selected speakers might be invited to submit articles for peer review.

Organisation: Department for the Study of Ancient and Medieval Thought, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Scientific board of the Symposium: Luigi Campi, Petra Mutlová, Petr Pavlas, Ota Pavlíček, Dan Török

Scientific board of the BRRP platform: Eva Doležalová, Michal Van Dussen, Kateřina Horníčková, Peter Morée, Petra Mutlová, Ota Pavlíček, Pavel Soukup, Vladimír Urbánek, Hana Vlhová-Wörner

For further information, please contact bohemian.reformation@gmail.com.

Kontakt

bohemian.reformation@gmail.com

CFP: The History of Agrochemicals and International Development: Knowledge, Politics, and Business, 1940s to the Present

 Workshop: The History of Agrochemicals and International Development: Knowledge, Politics, and Business, 1940s to the Present

Date and place of the workshop: 6 November 2026, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

In the decades following World War Two, the use of chemicals in agriculture (natural and synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides, herbicides, disinfectants, etc.) dramatically increased in many parts of the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, these substances became central to visions of agricultural modernization, international development, and rural economic progress. Their widespread application also reshaped ecosystems and raised concerns about environmental and public health effects. 

The goal of this workshop is to explore how agrochemicals have influenced the relationship between scientific knowledge, international development agendas and approaches, and national political priorities in different regions of the world. Furthermore, it aims to investigate the role of business companies and other non-governmental actors in shaping strategies for and against the use of agrochemicals. We invite contributions that analyze how agrochemicals have interacted with human and natural environments in specific localities. We are equally interested in how these interactions have been debated, legitimized, or contested within scientific communities, development organizations, and national and international politics. 

 

Workshop Themes

We welcome contributions from the fields of history and the social sciences working with historical approaches on topics including, but not limited to:

1. Knowledge about agrochemicals 

Production and circulation of scientific knowledge on pesticides, fertilizers, and other agrochemicals

Expert networks and agricultural research institutions

The role of universities, laboratories, and industry in shaping understandings of agrochemical risks and benefits

2. Agrochemicals and international development

Agrochemicals in development programs, in both the Global South and Global North

Cold War geopolitics, economic development, and science 

International organizations and associations promoting or regulating the use of agrochemicals

3. Environmental and health consequences of postwar agricultural development

Ecological transformations linked to chemical-intensive agriculture and forestry

Public health debates, toxicology, and environmental activism

Long-term assessments of chemical exposure in rural and forest environments

We welcome contributions covering topics from across the globe, particularly those that investigate issues related to gender, race, and class from social history, environmental history, multispecies history, and/or interdisciplinary approaches.

This event aims to bring together scholars at various career stages who are investigating the history of agriculture, environmental governance, international development, and rural development. The outcome of the conference will be a peer-reviewed edited volume. Contributors will be asked to pre-circulate papers based on original empirical research. 

This event is part of the research project “Chemical Crossroads: Agrarian Transitions, Pesticide Controversies, and International Governance, 1940–1970,” which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (www.chemicalcrossroads.com). The project will be able to cover parts of travel expenses and accommodation costs for participants (two nights of accommodation and travel in economy class). Participants are expected to arrive on Thursday, November 5, and stay until Saturday, November 7. The workshop will take place on Friday, November 6, and will end with dinner.

 

Timeline

Deadline for proposal submission: 16 March 2026

Interested participants are invited to submit a proposal consisting of an abstract of approximately 500 words and a short CV (max. one page).   Please send submissions to both Elife Biçer-Deveci, elife.bicer@graduateinstitute.ch, and Viktor Blum, viktor.blum@eui.eu.

Notification of acceptance: 20 April 2026

Deadline for pre-circulated papers: 18 October 2026

Accepted participants are expected to submit a full paper of approximately 5,000 words in advance of the conference.

 

Workshop organizers:

Elife Biçer-Deveci, Geneva Graduate Institute

Amalia Ribi Forclaz, Geneva Graduate Institute 

Corinna Unger, European University Institute

Grzegorz Konat, Gavin Rae (eds.). Exploring the Ideas of Tadeusz Kowalik: Crises, Transformations and Alternatives.

 Grzegorz Konat, Gavin Rae (eds.). Exploring the Ideas of Tadeusz Kowalik: Crises, Transformations and Alternatives. Palgrave Macmillan 2025.

This book explores the ideas of Tadeusz Kowalik, demonstrating their continued relevance in the modern world, particularly with regard to his work on capitalism and socialism. Providing insight into his life, economic ideas and political activities, it also examines his engagement with the work of Rosa Luxemburg, Michał Kalecki and Oskar Lange. By highlighting his analysis of contemporary issues, the book establishes a link between his work on political economy and public sector reform, particularly in relation to the health system and pensions.

The book also examines Kowalik’s analysis of different economic systems and the structural transformation of twentieth-century economies. It will be of interest to students and researchers of political economy and the history of economic thought.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-09283-0

CFP: Solidarity with Nature: Envisioning the Ecological Heritage of World Socialism

SOCIALIST ANTHROPOCENE IN THE VISUAL ARTS CONFERENCE

Solidarity with Nature: Envisioning the Ecological Heritage of World Socialism

Sainsbury Art Centre, University of East Anglia

21 - 22 May 2026

Deadline for proposals: 11 February 2026

www.sava.earth 

 

The progressive ecological heritage of socialism is routinely overshadowed by a prevalent emphasis on the billowing pollution of its smokestack industrialization and consistently occluded through the eco-catastrophist filter imposed on its environmental legacies by residual Cold War thinking. Rising environmental awareness from the 1960s saw socialist states make declarative commitments to the protection of nature, perceptible in ambitious environmental legislation, international scientific cooperation and the establishment of mass societies for the defence of natural heritage. Non-state forms of socialist environmentalism also emerged, with an ecological consensus bringing together radical currents of dissident environmentalism, alternative and faith-based eco-circles, as well as proponents of ecocentric worldviews at the confluence of ecosocialism and ancestral beliefs. This conference asks how socialist art history could be unlocked as a repository of this ecological heritage, explores the role of art practitioners in environmental movements and considers how experimental art practices performed beyond-human solidarities and expanded the system’s ecological horizons.

 

The notion of the Socialist Anthropocene encapsulates the system’s reconfiguration of the natural environment. As an ecocritical tool, it also paves the way for the non-deterministic reassessment of the capacious relation to nature of a geopolitical order that around 1980 saw a third of the world population living under various denominations of socialism. The geographies of world socialism extend from Vietnam to Cuba and from Albania to Mozambique, but also connotate the sites of multifarious infusions, interrelations and interactions with situated knowledges, traditions and beliefs that enlighten the system’s approach to planetarity. The SAVA Conference on Solidarity with Nature investigates how historical artworks portrayed the activities of official associations for nature protection, organized hiking groups and workers’ recreation in natural settings and how the progressive heritage of ecocentric attitudes and practices under socialism is reenvisioned in contemporary art. In what ways has the critique of the productivist ethos of developmentalism been articulated in the visual arts and how did ecology become a field for liberatory struggles? Also considered is how art practice was entwined with the rise of environmental consciousness around 1968 and embedded in the ecological activism of late socialism, and to what extent it articulated the entanglement of environmental and decolonial agendas. A further line of inquiry addresses artistic engagement with eco-utopianisms, varieties of eco-spiritualism and Indigenous nature practices, as well as the implications of the extension of socialist solidarity to more-than-human realms from the botanical and the zoological to the geological. 

 

Proposals are sought for 30 minute papers within and beyond the fields of environmental art history, ecocritical art theory and contemporary art practice that push the boundaries of interdisciplinary debate around attitudes and practices towards the natural world under socialism. Submissions are encouraged which foreground the ecological potentialities of African, Latin American and Asian socialisms, explore conjunctures of socialism and environmentalism in Pan-Africanism, Third Worldism and the Non-Alignment Movement, and engage with the ecocentric heritages of Eastern European, Baltic and Central Asian socialisms from ecocritical and decolonial perspectives. 

 

Topics might include but are not limited to:

Beyond scientific socialism; degrowth socialism and solar communism; socialist environmental holism; socialist cultures of self-sufficiency and repair; welfare socialism; planetary epistemologies of socialist science; Ujamaa and Afro-centric eco-socialisms; eco-conceptualism  

Eco-utopian socialism; socialist hippies and eco-communes; eco-socialist sisterhood; socialist vegetarianism; eco-spiritual socialisms 

Beyond-human heritage of socialism; depicting biodiversity and extinctions; artistic engagements with socialist zoos; hunting under socialism; socialist safaris; nature reserves; interspecies performances

Arboreal socialism; botanical acclimatization; transborder plant migrations; astrobotany; biocultural interconnectedness with rivers, lakes, forests, mountains, oceans and steppes

Eco-activisms; environmental consciousness in the socialist insurrections of 1968; eco-feminism; artist involvement with the environmental protests of 1989 from Eco-glasnost in Bulgaria to the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement in Kazakhstan; Indigenous activism against socialist developmentalism

Ecological aspects of socialist artworlds; artist colonies as vehicles of nature encounter; ecocritical exhibitions; mail art as site for the dissemination of ecological thought

 

The conference is organised within the framework of the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA), a European Research Council (ERC) / UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) supported research project led by Principal Investigator Dr. Maja Fowkes at the School of History and Art History, University of East Anglia. www.sava.earth 

 

Proposal Submissions

Please send a 250 word abstract and a short biography to: sava@uea.ac.uk.

Deadline for submissions: Wednesday 11 February 2026.

Support for travel and accommodation costs is available.

For further enquiries, please contact Natalia Pavlovicova: N.Pavlovicova@uea.ac.uk.

Contradictions, VIII (2024): Marxism and Psychoanalysis in Central and Eastern Europe

 Contradictions, VIII (2024):  Marxism and Psychoanalysis in Central and Eastern Europe, is online: https://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/en/current-issue

english-language issue

Content

Editorial Jiří Růžička and Šimon Wikstrøm Svěrák

 

Studies

Sára Bagdi, Gergely Csányi, All Against All. Freudo-Marxists, Adlerian-Marxists, Social Democrats, and Communists on Depth Psychology in Hungary Between the Two World Wars

Florian Ruttner, The Historical Group, Psychoanalysis, and the Nazi Menace

Inxhi Brisku, Unravelling the Criticism. Socialist Albania’s Examination of Freudian and Neo-Freudian Theories

Nico Graack, “Where are These (Neo-)Marxists?”. Žižek’s Lacanian Theory of Ideology and the Repression of Political Economy 

 

Translations

Karel Teige’s Introduction to Modern Painting and Záviš Kalandra’s The Achievement of André Breton, introduced by Jana Ndiaye Beránková

Jana Ndiaye Beránková, “We Should Dream!” Karel Teige and Záviš Kalandra’s Realms of Freedom

Karel Teige, Introduction to Modern Painting. On the Exhibit of the Group of Czech      Surrealists in the Mánes Exhibition Hall, Prague, January—February 1935

Záviš Kalandra, The Achievement of André Breton. Notes on the Czech Publication of    Breton’s Communicating Vessels

 

In Memoriam

Peter Steiner, introduced by Roman Kanda, Václav Černý’s Parrhesia

    Roman Kanda, Introduction

    Peter Steiner, Václav Černý’s Parrhesia 

 

Reviews

Jakub S. Beneš, Recovering the Emancipatory Side of Zionism?

Krzysztof Katkowski, Sovereignty Against… Whom? Catalan Marxist Tradition as a         Challenge

 

czech- and slovak-language issue

Obsah

Slovo úvodem Jiří Růžička a Šimon Wikstrøm Svěrák 

 

Studie

Lenka Vojtíšková, Odcizení subjektu, cizota karnevalu. Setkávání marxismu a psychoanalýzy v raném díle Julie Kristevy

Kristýna Dziková, Ondřej Slačálek, Česká iliberální levice. Formování metapolitických pozic

Jana Jetmarová, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Bolivijská dekoloniální teorie a praxe

 

Překlady

Otto Fenichel s úvodem Romana Telerovského, O psychoanalýze jako zárodku budoucí dialekticko-materialistické psychologie

Roman Telerovský, „Věčný reptal“. Otto Fenichel a jeho platforma sociologické psychoanalýzy / psychoanalytické sociologie

Otto Fenichel, O psychoanalýze jako zárodku budoucí dialekticko-materialistické psychologie

 

Materiály

Šimon Wikstrøm Svěrák (ed.), Pražské přednášky o psychoanalýze

 

Recenzní esej

Juraj Halas, Teória ekonomickej moci kapitálu

Karol Sanojca, Barbara Techmańska (eds.) Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego i jego pracownicy we wspomnieniach wychowanków, współpracowników, przyjaciół

Karol Sanojca, Barbara Techmańska (eds.) Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego i jego pracownicy we wspomnieniach wychowanków, współpracowników, przyjaciół [The Historical Institute of the University of Wrocław and its employees in the memories of students, colleagues, and friends]. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego 2025. 

OA: https://wuwr.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/final_techmanskasanojca_instytut-uwr.pdf

Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego to miejsce prowadzenia badań naukowych i kształcenia kolejnych pokoleń studentów. Jubileusz osiemdziesięciolecia działalności środowiska historycznego na Uniwersytecie Wrocławskim stał się impulsem do stworzenia syntetycznego i zarazem bogatego w szczegóły obrazu jego rozwoju, osiągnięć, a także znaczenia. Niniejsza publikacja, pod redakcją Karola Sanojcy i Barbary Techmańskiej, to wyjątkowy zbiór tekstów ukazujących Instytut jako żywy organizm — tworzony przez ludzi, ich pasje, osiągnięcia i codzienną pracę.

Przeszłość Instytutu Historycznego opowiedziana została przez tych, którzy go tworzyli i nadal tworzą. Nauka splata się tu z pamięcią o miejscu i ludziach, a wspomnienia malują żywy portret miejsca, dla wielu będącego drugim domem. Autorzy tekstów prowadzą czytelnika przez dzieje Instytutu, ukazując nie tylko zmiany organizacyjne, lecz przede wszystkim sylwetki wybitnych historyków. Ich pasje, ideowe spory, decyzje i codzienna praca stanowią fundament akademickiej wspólnoty i siłę napędową przemian. Osobiste wspomnienia wychowanków, współpracowników i przyjaciół są pełne refleksji, emocji oraz pamięci o codzienności, która współtworzyła tożsamość Instytutu.

Opracowanie łączy rzetelność naukową z przystępnym stylem, dzięki temu kierowana jest do wszystkich, którzy chcą zrozumieć, jak powstaje wiedza o przeszłości i jak wpływa ona na kształtowanie kultury oraz wspólnej pamięci. Szeroki wachlarz poruszanych wątków pokazuje, że działalność Instytutu wykracza daleko poza akademickie mury. Książka to hołd dla środowiska naukowego, które przez lata budowało prestiż wrocławskiej humanistyki.

ISIH Conference 2026: Order and Disorder in Global Intellectual History

 ISIH Conference 2026: Order and Disorder in Global Intellectual History

International Society for Intellectual History Conference 2026

Order and Disorder in Global Intellectual History     

Sabancı University, 18-20 September 2026

Call for Papers

ISIH 2026: Order and Disorder in Global Intellectual History

Date: 18–20 September 2026

Venue: Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University

Address: Bankalar Caddesi No: 2, Minerva Han, 34420 Karaköy, İstanbul, Türkiye

Background and Aims

Across the globe today, political and legal orders are unsettled by democratic backsliding, constitutional regression, ideological polarisation, and the rise of authoritarianism. This instability invites us not only to interpret present crises but also to reflect on how order and disorder have been conceptualised across time, space, and traditions.

The 2026 Conference of the International Society for Intellectual History (ISIH) invites participants to examine how historical actors, including political thinkers, jurists, reformers, revolutionaries, literati, and religious scholars, imagined, contested, and redefined order in moments of rupture and transformation.  They turned to cosmology, medicine, law, and politics as models of balance and development, shaping their visions of stability and change. The conference aims to examine these visions through the lenses of intellectual history and the history of political thought, highlighting how order was understood as something to be secured or restored, and disorder as either collapse or renewal. Bringing these historical perspectives into dialogue with the present, the conference aims to shed new light on today’s challenges of disorder and the search for sustainable political and legal orders in the future.

We encourage papers that explore the meanings and uses of “order” and “disorder” in intellectual history from the early modern period to the present. No fixed definition of these terms will be assumed, and they should be taken in their broadest sense. Topics might include historical debates about the sources and maintenance of order, reflections on instability or transformation as drivers of intellectual traditions, or alternative visions of order and disorder as tools for understanding change.

The conference will bring together scholars from diverse regions and traditions to examine how competing visions of order have emerged, clashed, and evolved. We particularly welcome contributions on how concepts of justice, legitimacy, and authority have been constructed, destabilised, or rethought, how global and local encounters reshaped ideas of sovereignty and constitutionalism, and how historical precedents have been mobilised to address contemporary crises.

Themes

Possible themes for papers include, but are not limited to:

Intellectual Histories of (Dis)order: How concepts such as crisis, revolution, anarchy, and fragmentation have been understood and mobilised in political and legal discourse, and how “order” itself has acquired shifting semantic layers across different linguistic, disciplinary, and social contexts.

Ideologies and Order: How competing ideologies imagined, described, and defined order and disorder, and how these visions structured political, social, and intellectual life across contexts.

Legal Orders and Normative Innovation: How disorder generated urgency for constitution-making and legal reform; how it prompted reflection on the relationship between order and the rule of law; and how law functioned both as a method of ordering society and as an opening to alternative constitutional futures.

Empire, Civilisation, and International Order: Legal and political thought in service of managing imperial pluralism and domination, from the rhetoric of the “civilising mission” to the alternative orders envisioned by colonised, semi-colonised, or imperial actors. Particular attention will be given to the role of international law and theories of global order.

Knowledge and Classification: How intellectuals have imposed order on knowledge, turning epistemic disorder into new methods, disciplines, and systems. From early modern strategies for managing “information overload” to modern projects of systematisation, practices of classification reveal how ordering knowledge has been inseparable from ordering society.

Medicine and the Body Politic: Medical metaphors that cast order as health and disorder as illness, decadence, or decay. Figures such as the “sick man of Europe” and the “sick man of Asia” illustrate how political crisis was framed through lifespans and pathological analogies, linking cure, reform, revolution, and reordering.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Daniel Margócsy (University of Cambridge)

Martti Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki)

Ayşe Zarakol (University of Cambridge)

General Guidelines

Submission Guidelines:

We invite proposals for:

Individual papers (max. 300 words)

Thematic panels (max. 500 words, with 3–4 paper abstracts)

Please include a short CV or biographical note (max. 2 pages).

Send all proposals to:  isih26.sr@sabanciuniv.edu

Timeline:

15 February 2026: Deadline for abstract submissions

15 April 2026: Notification of accepted participants

July 2026: Registration deadline

August 2026: Final programme published

Registration fee:

The conference fee is £100. Reduced rates and fee waivers are available to PhD candidates and early-career scholars through the bursary scheme below.

Bursaries:

The ISIH is pleased to offer a limited number of bursaries for travel (up to £500 from Europe and the Middle East, up to £800 from North America, and up to £1,000 from the rest of the world) as well as waived conference fees for PhD candidates and early career scholars (within 3 years of PhD completion). Please include a brief “statement of need” explaining limited access to institutional or other funding when submitting your proposal.

Publication opportunity:

Selected participants will be invited to submit manuscripts for individual articles or thematic special issues based on their contributions to the ISIH’s peer-reviewed journal, Intellectual History Review.

 Organizing Committee:

Banu Turnaoğlu Açan (Sabancı University; University of Cambridge)

Abdurrahman Atçıl (Sabancı University)

Egas Moniz Bandeira (University of Erlangen–Nuremberg)

Franz Fillafer (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)

Kerem Gülay (Koç University)

Ayşe Ozil (Sabancı University)

For more information on the application process, please check the conference website: https://fass.sabanciuniv.edu/en/ISIH

Przemysław Witkowski: Narratives, Political Representation, and Extremism in Polish Anti-Science Movements. "Plandemic," "Depopulation," and "The Free People"

Przemysław Witkowski: Narratives, Political Representation, and Extremism in Polish Anti-Science Movements. "Plandemic," "Depopulation," and "The Free People". Brill 2026.

Based on a wide range of empirical material, the book examines the narratives, political activity and extremist connections of Polish movements challenging the scientific consensus (anti-vaccination and 5G movements) and their connections with Russia. The author traces the roots of the conspiracy narratives related to vaccines, 5G and COVID-19, the channels of their spread and their penetration into mainstream politics, providing a unique opportunity to trace the radicalisation of their supporters. As a result, this publication is a unique work in which the described examples constitute an applicable analysis for researchers of conspiracy narratives related to medicine in other countries.

Marxism and Psychoanalysis in Central and Eastern Europe.

 New Volume of Contradictions Now Available!

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new volume of Contradictions, dedicated to Marxism and Psychoanalysis in Central and Eastern Europe.

As with last year, the Czech and English issues are published separately.

You can browse the contents here: https://kontradikce.flu.cas.cz/en/current-issue

Both Issue No. 1 and Issue No. 2 are now available for purchase online.

Arianna Borrelli and Helena Durnová (eds.): Computing Cultures: Knowledges and Practices (1940–1990).

Arianna Borrelli and Helena Durnová (eds.): Computing Cultures: Knowledges and Practices (1940–1990). Lüneburg: Meson press 2025. ISBN: 978-3-95796-273-7

OA: https://meson.press/books/computing-cultures/

Highlighting the diverse and fragmentary nature of the so-called “digital turn,” this volume offers a glimpse into the landscape of different computing cultures which emerged side by side between the 1940s and the 1990s, at times sharing some features, yet remaining essentially independent from each other. Some of these cultures disappeared, some thrive until today, but understanding all through their knowledges and practices, interconnections and broader historical context, is essential to deal critically with the visions and dreams, fears and tensions characterizing digital practices in today’s knowledge societies.

The Editors

Arianna Borrelli is a historian and philosopher of natural philosophy and modern science working at the Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg “Cultures of Research,” RWTH Aachen, where her research focuses on reconstructing the variety of cultures of computer-aided research. She has a special interest for the interplay of scientific knowing and the tools mediating it and has worked on medieval mathematical cosmology, early modern meteorology and mechanics, as well as quantum theories from their early days up to the present. She is currently President of the DHST/DLMPST Commission for History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC) and her recent publications include: A. Hocquet, F. Wieber, G. Gramelsberger, A. Borrelli et al. 2024. Software in science is ubiquitous yet overlooked. Nature Computational Science 4: 465–8; A. Borrelli. 2023. Aristotelianism, Chymistry and Mechanics in Early Seventeenth-century Europe. In: D. Verardi (ed.). Aristotelianism and Magic in Early Modern Europe, Bloomsbury, 105–44.

  

Helena Durnová teaches history of mathematics and computing as well as a course on history of science and technology at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. She has written on history of computing in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, including early programming practices there. She is interested in the intimate connections at the intersection of computing, mathematics, and language. She is also working on history of mathematics education in Czechoslovakia and together with Petra Antošová, Danny Beckers, Snezana Lawrence, is preparing the book A History of Mathematics Education in Czechoslovakia. Ideologies and Practices. to be published in the Springer series History of Mathematics Education.

Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe vol. 23 no. 4,. Thematic issue Intellectual history, historical narratives,and applied history. OA

Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe vol. 23 no. 4,. Thematic issue Intellectual history, historical narratives,and applied history. Open access, English

OA: https://ies.lublin.pl/rocznik/riesw/2025/4/

Artykuł

From the editors: Intellectual history, historical narratives, their institutionalisation, and applied history frameworks

Sławomir Łukasiewicz | Oleksandr Avramchuk

The Soviet system, the Soviet state, and Western expertise on the USSR before and after 1991

Mark Kramer

Richard Pipes’ advice on Russia for policymakers

Jonathan Daly

Pragmatic idealism and academic autonomy: Stephen P. Duggan and the American model of international education, 1919–1946

Anna Mazurkiewicz

Legend and fascination, geopolitics and deterrence: Intellectual myths and neoteric French policy towards Russia

Jędrzej Piekara

The decolonisation trap and the quest to reclaim a “kidnapped” Europe

Oleksandr Avramchuk

The Cold War origins of the Russian “Nazi” accusation against Ukraine: Soviet propaganda, Western memory, and historical knowledge

Kai Struve

Constructing the past, justifying the war: The analysis of selected Vladimir Putin speeches (2021–2024)

Dagmara Moskwa

Shaping the knowledge of Polish and other Central European immigration in the US in the 21st century: Reflections on the margins of the books by Carl J. Bon Tempo and Hasia Diner, Immigration: An American History, and Nancy Foner, One Quarter of the Nation: Immigration and the Transformation of America

Anna Fiń

Prometheanism and its “incarnations”

Zaur Gasimov

Émigré scholars as “agents of Westernisation”? Comparative reflections on the cases of Poland and Germany

Kai Johann Willms

The name “White Russia” and the origins of Belarusian studies in the West after 19451

Anton Saifullayeu

Remembering Radio Free Europe – Voices of Witnesses and Participants

Beata Białobrzewska

CFP: The Chemistry of Energy

 The Chemistry of Energy

Two panels co-chaired by Alexander Klose and Benjamin Steininger within Petrocultures 2026 Dresden: »Situating Energy«, August 26-28, 2026

Call for Papers for a double panel within Petrocultures 26: Situating Energy at TU Dresden, Aug 26-28

Please share and send proposals until January 18 2026 to:

alexander.klose@geo.uni-halle.de und steininger@gea.mpg.de

The plethora of new materials in the petromodern era—refined fuels, ammunition, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, plastics—were fashioned as complex chemical-industrial products. Current proposals for an ecological and just transition moving away from fossil resources and other destructive forms of extractivism largely rest on the ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ transformation of exactly these petromodern developments in chemical sciences and technology. However, despite its pivotal historical role in shaping the petromodern present, chemical technology has received little attention in petromodernity research.

With our panels we propose to read the programmatic Dresden call for “Situating energies” as a motivation to focus on the chemical sciences, technologies and infrastructures that provide energy and materials for all types of societal metabolisms—and on their social and cultural repercussions. In doing so, we investigate both the epistemologies behind chemical principles and technologies, as well as their geographical and historical situatedness—in our case in Central Europe, in Germany, in the former GDR, at the crossroads of historical experiences with different types of petromodernity: capitalist, NS, social-democratic, socialist, and post-Soviet.

The aim of our panel is to identify and analyze chemical-societal "double bonds” that combine perspectives on chemical technologies with perspectives on social, societal and political experiences. We therefore invite proposals to address chemical geographies and constellations from industry and scientific research, to social and cultural aspects; from chemical factories and laboratories, to bodies and landscapes. We encourage contributions from all fields of social and cultural research, as well as from chemistry, the humanities, history, and artistic or curatorial research. Although our focus is on Central Europe, we welcome contributions that deal with chemical geographies around the globe.

Find the complete CFP here:

http://beauty-of-oil.org/2025/12/17/cfp-the-chemistry-of-energy/

The Polish Theosophical Society: History, Ideas, and Related Organizations from the 19th Century to World War II

 Karolina Maria Kotkowska: Polskie Towarzystwo Teozoficzne Historia, idee i organizacje pokrewne od XIX w. do II wojny światowej [The Polish Theosophical Society: History, Ideas, and Related Organizations from the 19th Century to World War II]. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego 2025. ISBN: 978-83-233-5628-8

Opis książki

Teozofia w Polsce była czymś więcej niż ruchem ezoterycznym – stanowiła próbę stworzenia nowoczesnej duchowości, łączącej mistykę z praktyką, a poszukiwanie sensu z ideą służby i braterstwa. Książka odkrywa zapomniany świat polskich teozofów – artystów, intelektualistów i reformatorów życia codziennego, którzy na początku XX wieku tworzyli wspólnoty, organizowali wykłady, prowadzili działalność wydawniczą i społeczną. Ich wizja duchowości obejmowała nie tylko przekonania dotyczące niedostrzegalnych gołym okiem warstw rzeczywistości, ale również edukację, wegetarianizm, prawa kobiet, sztukę czy medycynę naturalną. Na podstawie rozproszonych archiwaliów i publikacji autorka rekonstruuje dzieje ruchu teozoficznego w Polsce – od pierwszych salonów okultystycznych i inicjatyw artystycznych po Polskie Towarzystwo Teozoficzne. To opowieść o zapomnianym wymiarze modernizmu, w którym duchowe poszukiwania łączyły się z projektami społecznymi, a ezoteryzm stawał się narzędziem przemiany rzeczywistości.

Badania nad historią nurtów ezoterycznych w kulturze i związanych z nimi społeczności mają już od przynajmniej dwóch dekad ugruntowaną pozycję w świecie akademickim. W Polsce obszar ten również znajduje coraz większe uznanie, choć nadal jest traktowany z pewnym dystansem jako mało istotny i marginalny. Z drugiej strony trudny dostęp do źródeł, ich specyficzny język czy niejednoznaczność interpretacyjna sprawiają, że wkraczanie na ten niepewny grunt łatwo może skończyć się kompromitacją badacza lub brakiem akceptacji ze strony recenzentów. Tylko osoby prawdziwie zafascynowane i zdeterminowane decydują się na rezygnację z bardziej bezpiecznych tematów i poświęcenie swego wysiłku badawczego tej nadal słabo rozpoznanej tradycji w dziejach kultury europejskiej. Do takich właśnie uczonych należy bez wątpienia autorka recenzowanej pracy, dr Karolina Maria Kotkowska. Jej monografia zasługuje na uznanie nie tylko ze względu na pionierski charakter i solidny warsztat badawczy, ale również z powodu ukazania nieznanych wcześniej (lub celowo pomijanych) związków z teozofią wielu wybitnych postaci z kręgów uczonych, poetów, artystów, arystokratów czy późniejszych organizatorów walki zbrojnej podczas II wojny światowej. Książka jest napisana z pasją i przekonaniem, podparta znakomitą orientacją zarówno w starszej, jak i najnowszej literaturze przedmiotu, polskiej i światowej. Autorka wykorzystała chyba wszystkie możliwe źródła drukowane (w tym gazety codzienne), niekiedy zachowane w pojedynczych egzemplarzach, ale na największe uznanie zasługuje niebywały wręcz zakres kwerend archiwalnych. Dotarcie do archiwów Towarzystwa Teozoficznego w Indiach, USA i Wielkiej Brytanii (już dzisiaj niedostępnego dla zewnętrznych badaczy) pozwoliło jej na zestawienie wykazu polskich członków Towarzystwa i odkrycie wielu nieznanych wcześniej nazwisk.

Z recenzji dr. hab. Rafała Prinke

Dzięki tej pracy liczne nierozwiązane dotąd wątki, odnoszące się do polskiej przedwojennej teozofii, zostały skrupulatnie rozsupłane, a wiele z nich zyskało pogłębione, ale i nowe interpretacje. Sieć wzajemnych powiązań pomiędzy członkami grup, ideami i konkretnymi projektami teozofów różnych frakcji oraz członków innych ugrupowań ezoterycznych została przez autorkę zrekonstruowana bardzo przekonująco i z właściwym, rzetelnym odniesieniem do źródeł. Struktura książki jest przejrzysta i logiczna, dobrze prowadzi czytelnika zarówno zorientowanego w niuansach polskiego przedwojennego ezoteryzmu, jak i dopiero wkraczającego na tę niełatwą, acz fascynującą drogę. Autorka nie tylko przedstawia, analizuje i interpretuje wydarzenia, zajmująco łącząc je z teozoficznymi ideami, lecz także barwnie charakteryzuje etapy samego procesu badawczego. Czytelnik zostaje tym sposobem skutecznie włączony w proces badawczy i zainspirowany. To bardzo dobry przykład książki wyrastającej z autentycznej pasji badawczej.

Z recenzji prof. dr hab. Moniki Rzeczyckiej

O Autorce

Dr Karolina Maria Kotkowska jest absolwentką filozofii, etnologii, pedagogiki oraz socjologii. Pracuje na stanowisku adiunkta badawczego w dyscyplinie nauk o kulturze i religii w Katedrze Porównawczych Studiów Cywilizacji Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. W swoich interdyscyplinarnych badaniach koncentruje się na marginesach kultury, ruchach alternatywnych, kontrowersyjnych ideach – szczególnie tych o charakterze ezoterycznym i religijnym. W perspektywie historii intelektualnej bada nowe ruchy religijne i ezoteryzm oraz ich rolę w kształtowaniu różnych zjawisk kulturowych. Jest autorką ponad 30 artykułów naukowych, m.in. w „Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism” czy „Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions”, a także współredaktorką kilku monografii, w tym Studia ezoteryczne. Wątki polskie (2016), Czarownice. Studia z kulturowej historii fenomenu (2017) lub Studies on Western Esotericism in Central and Eastern Europe (2019).

ZfO thematic issue: Researching (in) the Mountains: Transcultural Perspectives on Knowledge Production in the Eastern Carpathians

 Die Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung / Journal of East Central European Studies (ZfO) Bd. 74 Nr. 4 (2025), thematic issue: Researching (in) the Mountains: Transcultural Perspectives on Knowledge Production in the Eastern Carpathians

Aufsätze und Forschungsberichte

Researching (in) the Mountains: Transcultural Perspectives on Knowledge Production in the Eastern Carpathians

Martin Rohde, Filip Herza

https://doi.org/10.25627/202574411754

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PDF (English)

| 483-497

Cultivating and Сhallenging Patronizing Images of Subcarpathian Rus

Pavlo Leno

https://doi.org/10.25627/202574411755

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PDF (English)

| 499-535

(Re-) Imagining Hutsuls in the Interwar Period: Type Photographs in Nationalizing East-Central Europe

Martin Rohde

https://doi.org/10.25627/202574411756

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PDF (English)

| 537-570

Protecting Primeval Mountains, Hutsul Distinctiveness, and Hutsuls Themselves: The Eastern Carpathian Nature Conservation Discourse in the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)

Jagoda Wierzejska

https://doi.org/10.25627/202574411758

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PDF (English)

| 571-605

From Rustics to Model Hungarians: The Transformation of Szeklers in Interwar Hungarian Academic Discourse

Gergely Romsics

https://doi.org/10.25627/202574411757

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PDF (English)

| 607-633

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