Gáspár Salamon: Stilarchitektur? Transfer kunsthistorischen Wissens in der ungarischen Architekturlehre (1864–1914).

 Gáspár Salamon: Stilarchitektur? Transfer kunsthistorischen Wissens in der ungarischen Architekturlehre (1864–1914). Böhlau 2026. ISBN 978-3-412-53436-3

Über dieses Buch

Die Josephs-Technische Hochschule in Budapest behauptete sich im ausgehenden 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert als Bollwerk einer an historischen Stilen orientierten Baupraxis. Unter der Ägide der Stilarchitektur bereitete der ungarische Architekturunterricht einen fruchtbaren Rezeptionsboden für Wissensbestände der deutschsprachigen Kunstgeschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts. Ausgehend von zu architekturgeschichtlichen Vorlesungen entstandenen Manuskripten spürt Gáspár Salamon dem Nachleben kunsthistorischer Wissensstrukturen nach. Er fragt auch danach, wie an Baustilen haftende Konzepte und Wertvorstellungen durch diesen Wissenstransfer auf die Stilauffassung und gestalterische Haltung der Lehrenden und Lernenden einwirkten, die das damalige Baugeschehen in Ungarn maßgeblich prägten.

Arkadiusz S. Więch: Della Croce. Życie i działalność Stanisława Krzyżanowskiego (1865-1917) [Della croce: Life and work of Stanisław Krzyżanowski (1865-1917)].

Arkadiusz S. Więch: Della Croce. Życie i działalność Stanisława Krzyżanowskiego (1865-1917) [Della croce: Life and work of Stanisław Krzyżanowski (1865-1917)]. Historia Iagellonica 2026. ISBN: 978-83-67497-83-1

Książka pióra Arkadiusza Stanisława Więcha wypełnia dotkliwą lukę w polskiej historiografii (...). Stanisław Krzyżanowski, wybitny historyk mediewista, paleograf i znawca nauk pomocniczych historii, archiwista, muzealnik, zasłużony akademik, dydaktyk oraz miłośnik Krakowa, współzałożyciel i prezes Towarzystwa Miłośników Historii i Zabytków Krakowa, był postacią nietuzinkową i niezwykle dynamiczną. Wiódł życie na tyle intensywne, że współcześnie wymaga to od jego biografa nie lada wysiłku oraz wysokich kompetencji badawczych i warsztatowych. Studia nad jego życiem i działalnością wymagały wnikliwej analizy wielkiej, zróżnicowanej i rozproszonej bazy źródłowej (...). Arkadiusz Stanisław Więch w udany sposób zrekonstruował życiową drogę bohatera swojej książki i teraz zabiera w tę podróż czytelników.  

 

(z recenzji profesora Łukasza T. Sroki)

Marie Bahenská – Jan Hálek (eds.): „Kara ben Nemsí“ z Kroměříže. Turecko a Írán očima Jana Rypky

 Marie Bahenská – Jan Hálek (eds.): „Kara ben Nemsí“ z Kroměříže. Turecko a Írán očima Jana Rypky [“Kara ben Nemsí” from Kroměříž. Turkey and Iran Through the Eyes of Jan Rypka]. Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR 2026. ISBN: 978-80-88611-50-9

Prameny k dějinám vědy. Svazek 2.

Edice představuje předního českého orientalistu Jana Rypku (1886–1968) v roli popularizátora Orientu. Rozhlasovými a veřejnými přednáškami i články publikovanými v periodickém tisku zprostředkovával zájemcům z řad odborné a laické veřejnosti informace o proměnách meziválečného Turecka a Íránu. Čerpal přitom ze svých zkušeností získaných během několika dlouhodobých pobytů v obou zemích. Jeho líčení, v nichž se prolínají osobní dojmy s pohledem odborníka, jsou nejen poutavá a literárně zdařilá, ale slouží také jako cenný historický pramen. Rypka dokázal barvitě popsat atmosféru tureckých a íránských měst i tamního venkova, zachytit každodennost islámského světa, střetávání tradice a modernity.

Andrey Vinogradov: In Still Waters Industrial Pollution and the Birth of Russian Environmental Policy (1871–1931)

Андрей Виноградов: В тихих омутах Промышленное загрязнение и рождение российской экологической политики (1871–1931). Новое литературное обозрение 2026 // Andrey Vinogradov: In Still Waters Industrial Pollution and the Birth of Russian Environmental Policy (1871–1931). NLO, 2026.

История пореформенной России в «долгом» XIX веке была тесно связана с бурной индустриализацией — именно тогда общество впервые задумалось о последствиях влияния экономического роста на природную среду. В этом исследовании Андрей Виноградов прослеживает появление и развитие в публичном пространстве экологической проблематики и дискуссий, вызванных промышленным загрязнением и техногенными катастрофами. Он ищет ответы на важные вопросы: как «порча воды» — смутное, малопонятное явление для тех времен — превратилась в вопрос государственной важности? Как нефтяные пятна на Волге, ядовитые стоки текстильных мануфактур Морозовых, отходы сахарных заводов меняли не только законодательство, но и взгляды чиновников и общества на допустимые пределы промышленного роста? Как показывает автор, вокруг проблем, связанных с водной инфраструктурой и загрязнением, сталкивались интересы фабрикантов и крестьян, городских дум и министерских чиновников, появлялись новые общественные институты и горизонтальные структуры. Земства и думы искали способы защитить права местных жителей, а эксперты-гигиенисты впервые определяли нормы допустимых концентраций вредных веществ, сохранившие актуальность и в условиях форсированной советской индустриализации. Эта книга — рассказ о том, как в конфликтах вокруг заводских стоков и загрязненных рек в России зарождалась экологическая политика. Андрей Виноградов — историк, PhD, постдокторант Лейбниц-института истории и культуры Восточной Европы (Германия).

Андрей Виноградов — историк экологии, PhD, постдокторант Лейбниц-института истории и культуры Восточной Европы.

CFP: Animals as Protein Factories: A History of European Livestock across the East-West Divide (1950s – present)

 CFP: Animals as Protein Factories: A History of European Livestock across the East-West Divide (1950s – present), Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, 15 to 16 June 2027

This workshop explores how industrial livestock farming (whether for pigs, cows, chickens, or salmon) transformed animals as well as human diets on both sides of the Iron curtain, reshaped working communities, and caused massive environmental damage by altering landscapes and agricultural infrastructure. It also examines the upheaval in the relationships between humans and non-humans in the production of livestock, while considering aquaculture as an extension of the boundaries of the industrial domestication of living beings.

It traces how post-1945 frameworks shaped farming systems in Western, Southern, and Eastern Europe, including former Soviet states (incl. the Caucasus and Central Asia). It also addresses the collapse of working communities following the fall of the Eastern Bloc, and the subsequent integration of these regions into the global European market and its specific standardization. By analyzing the expansion of the European Union in Southern and Eastern Europe, the legacy of the Eastern Bloc, and recent shifts, like the fast-tracked integration of Ukraine and Moldova following Russia’s war of aggression, the event connects agricultural history and modern geopolitics. Additionally, it explores Europe’s colonial and post-colonial trade relationships—such as for livestock, feed, and technology exports—with non-European economies. The workshop also links these geopolitical frameworks to local environmental factors like climate, soil, topography, and water systems.

The event welcomes broad comparative, transnational or multi-scale approaches, while equally encouraging case studies focused on specific European locations that need not compare directly. This interdisciplinary workshop brings together experts from history, geography, sociology, anthropology, economy, veterinary medicine, biology, agriculture. Interest in audiovisual documentary collections and oral history projects are especially welcomed.

The proposals may focus on the following five themes: 1) Workers and Experts 2) The reshaping of the relationships between humans and non-humans and the life cycle of domesticated animals 3) The circulation of technologies, knowledge and consumption standards across a divided continent 4) Environmental disasters and the spatial distribution of industrial livestock farming 5) Between collapse and expansion – socio-economic and political entanglements in European livestock farming.

You can find an extended version of the call here (https://cmb.hu-berlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/CfP-Animals-as-Factories.pdf).

Submission of Proposals:

Please complete the application form online by 18 October 2026. The link to the application form is here (https://framaforms.org/animals-as-protein-factories-a-history-of-european-livestock-across-the-east-west-divide-1950s). The application should include a 300–500 words abstract and a brief biographical note (100-150 words).

Conference discussions will be based on pre-circulated papers, which should not exceed 10,000 words. A selection of papers is planned for publication.

Organization:

The workshop will take place at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin from 15 to 16 June 2027 and will be held in English.

Participants’ travel and accommodation will be partly covered. When applying, please indicate whether you have access to alternative sources of funding to cover these costs.

In line with our commitment to reducing the workshop’s environmental impact, air travel will only be eligible for reimbursement if there is no train connection available under 10 hours.

The workshop is designed as an in-person encounter. Online participation will be considered only in exceptional circumstances, in particular for colleagues from overseas or for those based in Ukraine who are unable to leave the country.

For any questions, please feel free to contact us at animals.as.factories@gmail.com

Organizing Committee

Margot Lyautey (Helmut-Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg)

Nathalie Moine (CNRS/Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)

Anna Safronova (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

Call for papers: Development Knowledge and Policies from the Global South, 1930–2000

Call for papers: Development Knowledge and Policies from the Global South, 1930–2000. Organisers: Teresa Huhle, Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen, Frederik Schulze (Department of History & Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne). Cologne 19.07.2027 - 20.07.2027, Deadline 18.10.2026

In recent years, scholarship on the history of developmentalism has included the Global South by exploring anti-developmentalist thought and resistance to development policies. At the same time, historiography started to acknowledge the participation of Global South actors in the making of Cold War development projects. Our conference aims to systematize these approaches and to resituate the Global South within the history of twentieth century developmentalism. To this end, we want to explore development knowledge and policies which were produced by actors from the Global South.

We can build on scholarship that has illuminated the dynamic and heterogeneous trajectories of development throughout the twentieth century by moving beyond a focus on Point IV and US-American policies and situating them within a broader chronological, geographical, and substantive context (Unger 2018, Lorenzini 2019). Authors have described non-US-American origins of the idea of “development” (McVety 2018). They have also analyzed the role of the League of Nations (Clavin 2013) as well as late imperial policies of development from the 1930s to the 1950s (Cooper 1996). Studies of community development in the 1950s and 1960s have highlighted that there was not only modernization theory-led authoritative planning but there also existed small-scale and bottom-up development schemes (Immerwahr 2015/ Pohl-Valero 2026). The broad disenchantment with large-scale state-led development projects, the rise of NGOs in the sector, and the turn to entrepreneurial approaches of development have been described for the period since the 1970s (Scott 1998, Davies 2014, Macekura 2015). Concepts of sustainable development and ideas of de-growth are receiving growing attention, too (Borowy/Schmelzer 2017). What is more, global histories of Eastern European state socialism have shed light on development thinking and practices beyond the Iron Curtain and have diversified our image of North-South entanglements during the Cold War (Mark/Kalinovsky/Marung 2020).

Yet, the historiographical narrative continues to be shaped predominantly by ideas and practices originating in the Global North. Critical scholarship has paid great attention to analyzing the continuity of exploitative and partly violent power relations that were inherent to many development policies stemming from the Global North. This line of research has understood local actors as agents of resistance against these power relations and interpreted development critique, post-development approaches, and indigenous knowledge as opposition to Western development thought (Escobar 1995, Lang/Mokrani 2013).

As a consequence, the Global South is still often treated as a “supposed local institutional and scientific vacuum” (Pohl-Valero 2026, 21). Ideas and practices of development devised by local elites – on national, regional, or community levels – are therefore mostly overlooked. The workshop aims at uncovering how actors and institutions from the Global South (co-)produced theoretical and practical knowledge to develop their countries, regions, and communities. We welcome contributions discussing one or several of the following areas:

1. Development knowledge (co-)produced in the Global South

African socialism, ujamaa, and dependency theory are among the most well-known concepts of development brought forward, negotiated, and circulated by actors from the Global South. What other concepts were there and what fields of knowledge have been identified as relevant to development by actors from Africa, Latin America, and Asia? In which socio-cultural settings have they been developed? What institutions and actors contributed to stabilizing and circulating them? How where they put into practice?

2. Relations between the Global North and the Global South

How did actors from the Global South conceive of their relationship to development policies from the Global North? Did they understand their knowledge as in resistance to approaches from the United States, Western, or Eastern Europe? Or did they regard them as adaptation or local transformation of Northern ideas and practices? How did actors from the Global North react to non-Western development approaches? How can we describe this relationship, taking Global South agency into account but not losing power asymmetries from sight?

3. Debate and resistance within Global South societies

How did development thinkers and practitioners from Africa, Latin America, and Asia negotiate their ideas and concepts within their respective societies? How did they react when facing resistance? What power relations did their ideas and practices imply?

4. Networks and institutions of development knowledge from the South

Can we identify specific spatial or institutional hubs for the emergence of development knowledge from the Global South? What role did the UN-system play and how did institutions of South-South interaction contribute to the production and circulation of alternate development knowledge?

The workshop is open to a variety of fields of development thought and intervention such as urban planning, infrastructure development, economics, business administration, agriculture, family planning, public health, and social planning. We particularly welcome contributions that address the listed questions and fields of development from a history of knowledge perspective.

The workshop will be based on pre-circulated papers of max. 4,000 words which need to be submitted by 31 May 2027.

If you are interested in participating, please send your abstract of max. 400 words and a short CV (1 page) to the organizers by October 18, 2026. Travel and accommodation costs will be reimbursed depending on the outcome of a conference grant application. A budget for junior researchers has already been secured.

Organizers:

Teresa Huhle (teresa.huhle@uni-koeln.de)

Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen (katharina.kreuder-sonnen@uni-koeln.de)

Frederik Schulze (frederik.schulze@uni-koeln.de)

Bibliography

Clavin, Patricia (2013). Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cooper, Frederick (1996). Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Davies, Thomas (2014). NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Escobar, Arturo (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Immerwahr, Daniel (2015). Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lang, Miriam and Dunia Mokrani, eds. (2013). Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America. Quito: Fundación Rosa Luxemburg.

Lorenzini, Sara (2019). Global Development: A Cold War History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Macekura, Stephen (2015). Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mark, James; Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Steffi Marung, eds. (2020). Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Maruca, Barbara and Matthias Schmelzer (2017). “Sustainable Degrowth,” in Iris Borowy and Matthias Schmelzer, eds. History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth. Milton Park: Routledge, 174–197.

McVety, Amanda Kay (2018). “Wealth and Nations. The Origins of International Development Assistance,” in Stephen J. Macekura and Erez Manela, eds. The Development Century. A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 21–39.

Pohl-Valero, Stefan (2026). “State, Experts, and Rural Development in Colombia, 1930–50. A Local Genealogy of International Community Development,” in History of Science, online first, 10.1177/00732753261428874.

Scott, James C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Unger, Corinna R. (2018). International Development: A Postwar History. London: Bloomsbury.

Kontakt

Teresa Huhle (teresa.huhle@uni-koeln.de)

Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen (katharina.kreuder-sonnen@uni-koeln.de)

Frederik Schulze (frederik.schulze@uni-koeln.de)

[Image: Roger Joseph Felli – the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ghana in Gdańsk. Janusz Uklejewski, 1979 / PAP, from the page afrotopie.online]

Webinar recording: Marat Balyshev | Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine

 Prof. Marat Balyshev | Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine | by Ukraine Art Aid Center e.V.

English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92s1RUUiSxI / Ukrainian version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epjdL5UtMaI

Explore the webinar series & register for the next session: https://sites.google.com/view/ukraines-archival-landscape

What stories can technical drawings, scientific records and infrastructure documents tell us about a country – and what happens when the places they document are transformed or destroyed by war? 🇺🇦

On 11 September 2026, the second webinar of “Ukraine’s Archival Landscape: Remote Access and Research Opportunities” welcomed Prof. Dr. Marat Balyshev, Doctor of Historical Sciences and Head of the Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine.

Prof. Balyshev offers a fascinating look at an archival world that is often less visible: the records of Ukraine’s scientific, technological and industrial history. He shows how documents created for practical purposes can become powerful historical sources – preserving knowledge about people, places and achievements, and allowing researchers to rediscover stories that might otherwise be lost.

The lecture also addresses the realities of archival work during Russia’s ongoing war and the changing relationship between preservation and access. A particularly striking example is the cultural and artistic project “Site of Resistance: Infrastructure Projects of the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant,” which demonstrates how archival materials can acquire an entirely new significance when the places they document become part of the history of war and resistance.

As Prof. Balyshev notes:

“Today, archivists face the challenge of preserving documents while ensuring their continued accessibility and use, so that they remain understandable to the modern researcher.”

hybrid conference: (Pro)Creating a Socialist Future: Knowledge, Politics, and Practices of Reproduction in Eastern Europe and the (Post)Soviet Space

 hybrid conference: (Pro)Creating a Socialist Future: Knowledge, Politics, and Practices of Reproduction in Eastern Europe and the (Post)Soviet Space

International Workshop | October 1–2, 2026 | Helsinki

The international workshop brings together scholars working on reproduction in Eastern Europe, the (post)Soviet space, and (former) socialist countries across the Global South to explore how (post)socialist societies negotiated their identities and futures through reproductive politics and practices. The aim is to analyze knowledge production, connections between government policies and individual reproductive choices as well as differences, entanglements and conflicting positions among the countries of the socialist bloc.

You can consult the program here (https://mwseasteurope.hypotheses.org/files/2026/09/Programmblatt-17_09_26_NM.pdf).

More info and registration for zoom: https://mwseasteurope.hypotheses.org/11622

CfP: 14th Biennial European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference

 CfP: 14th Biennial European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference

Environmental History Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

Salzburg, Austria | 7-10 September 2027

The European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) is pleased to invite proposals for panel sessions, individual papers, book presentations, posters, roundtables, and more experimental presentation formats for its upcoming biennial conference. The conference theme, Environmental History Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries, aims to highlight and reinforce the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary nature and culture of environmental history.

The Conference will be held in Salzburg, Austria, from 7 to 10 September 2027. It is organised by the ESEH and the University of Salzburg.

The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2026, 23:59 CET.

Notifications will be sent out in February 2027.

Submit: https://www.conftool.pro/eseh2027/

Conference website: http://www.eseh2027.at/

Download here (https://eseh.org/sviluppo/wp-content/uploads/CfP-ESEH-2027.pdf) the call in PDF.

Bečvář Jindřich, Bečvářová Martina: Napoleon pražského učení. Josef Ladislav Jandera (1776-1857) [Napoleon of Prague Scholarship—Josef Ladislav Jandera (1776–1857)].

 Bečvář Jindřich, Bečvářová Martina: Napoleon pražského učení. Josef Ladislav Jandera (1776-1857) [Napoleon of Prague Scholarship—Josef Ladislav Jandera (1776–1857)]. ČVUT v Praze 2026. ISBN 978-80-01-07551-7

Monografie Napoleon pražského učení - Josef Ladislav Jandera (1776-1857) pojednává v širších kulturně historických souvoslostech o životních osudech, pedagogickém působení, matematické a historické práci Josefa Ladislava Jandery, profesora Filozofické fakulty pražské univerzity a člena Královské kanonie premonstrátů na Strahově, který na pražské univeruitě vyučoval matematiku více než padesát let a ovlivnilvýchovu a vzdělání řady našich obrizenců, vzdělanců, politiků, duchovních, představitelů vojska i státní správy, neboť u něho musel studovat každý, kdo v 19. století v našich zemích něco znamenal.

Na základě studia rozsáhlé Janderovy pozůstalosti jsou podrobně zmapovány jeho dosud nedoceněné a neprávem přehlížené všestranné aktivity. Přiblíženo je jeho úsilí vyučovat nelehkou a neoblíbenou matematiku v době, kdy ji musel studovat každý posluchač univerzity bez ohledu na své budoucí profesní zaměření. Dále je ukázáno, kolik času, energie a peněz věnoval Jandera svému rodnému městu, Hořicím v podkrkonoší, kolik shromáždil pramenů a informací k regionální historii. 

Monografie podává poměrně podrobné a přehledné informace o rozsáhlé Janderově rukopisné pozůstalosti.

online conference Living the Soviet Utopia: Cultural History of Technologies in Ukraine, 1922–1991

 On 24–25 September 2026, the Faculty of History at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the Department of History at the University of Basel bring together researchers for the online conference Living the Soviet Utopia: Cultural History of Technologies in Ukraine, 1922–1991. 

Download: Conference programme (https://uris.ch/assets/images/Events/Conference-Program.pdf)

The conference approaches technology not simply as infrastructure or economic development, but as a cultural force shaping knowledge, social hierarchies and everyday life. It examines the relationship between visions of progress and lived experiences of scarcity, adaptation and unequal access to technological change. 

Four panels explore these questions: 

Cybernetics, Mass Housing & Atomic Utopias

Secret Cities, Elites & Closed Knowledge

Technologies of Everyday Life: Sound, Mobility & Health

Visualizing Progress: Media, Cinema & Photography 

Contributions range from ideas of digital immortality among Kyiv cyberneticists and the monuments of Prypiat to consumer tape recorders, family photography and scientific cinema. Researchers from Basel include Olha Martynyuk, who examines road rallies as a mobility culture in early Soviet Ukraine, and Oleksii Kuchanskyi, whose presentation explores scientific filmmaking and the representation of nuclear contamination. 

The conference is organised by Gennadii Kazakevych, F. Benjamin Schenk and Olha Martynyuk within the joint Ukrainian–Swiss research project Testing the Soviet Utopia: Social History of Technologies in Ukraine, 1922–1991, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

Participation 

24 September 2026: 14:00–18:00 

25 September 2026: 10:00–15:00 

All times are in Kyiv time (EEST). 

The conference takes place online via Zoom. No registration is required. More: https://uris.ch/events/living-the-soviet-utopia

(Image: Oleksandr Dubovyk, Svit Tekhniky (The World of Technology), 1980. Detail of the mosaic on the façade of the Young Technicians’ Station, Kyiv. Image from the conference programme.)

Belarusian Historical Scholarship in Exile: Current State and Challenges.

 A new series of analytical papers examining the current state and key challenges of Belarusian scholarship in exile has been published following the completion of the project Belarusian Historical Scholarship in Exile: Current State and Challenges.

Online version: https://www.icelds.org/portfolio/new-analytical-paper-series-examines-belarusian-scholarship-in-exile/

Implemented with the financial support of the EU4Belarus: Support to Advanced Learning and Training (SALT II) programme, funded by the European Union, the project sought to strengthen professional dialogue and expert exchange within the Belarusian academic and intellectual community outside the country.

The publication series responds to the profound changes that have affected Belarusian academia since 2020. For many scholars, exile was not a planned or gradual process but the result of political pressure, repression and the destruction of institutional conditions for independent academic work in Belarus. As a consequence, a substantial part of the academic community has continued its work abroad, becoming integrated into different universities, research institutions and academic systems.

These developments have led to increasing fragmentation. Belarusian researchers today work in different institutional, linguistic and disciplinary environments, often within local or international research agendas that leave limited space for sustained reflection on Belarusian issues. Opportunities for regular professional exchange among Belarusian scholars abroad remain limited and frequently depend on informal networks.

At the same time, interest in Belarusian history and historical memory has grown. However, this interest does not always correspond to the logic of academic research and is not always accompanied by the resources necessary to support it. As a result, many researchers find themselves balancing different audiences and expectations without sufficient opportunities to reconcile them.

Against this background, the project aimed to create a space for professional reflection on the conditions under which Belarusian historical scholarship exists in exile today. Rather than proposing institutional solutions or seeking to formulate common positions, it focused on facilitating informed discussion and the exchange of experience among invited experts in a confidential setting.

The analytical paper series is the principal outcome of this work. Drawing on a series of expert seminars, the publications examine the institutional, linguistic and professional conditions in which Belarusian historical scholarship is developing outside the country. They also address the interaction between Belarusian and foreign historical narratives, the structural challenges facing scholars in exile, the opportunities and limitations of different institutional models, and possible approaches to strengthening the long-term resilience of Belarusian scholarship.

Rather than presenting a single perspective or claiming to represent the entire academic community, the papers document the current state of the field at a particular moment. They bring together the principal observations and reflections emerging from the expert discussions and are intended to contribute to continued professional dialogue on the future of Belarusian scholarship in exile.

The analytical paper series was edited by Dr. Hanna Vasilevich, who coordinated the editorial process and worked closely with the authors in developing and preparing the manuscripts for publication.

Here you can access papers prepared during the project:

Interstate dialogue on historical issues between Belarus and Germany: obstacles and failure factors (by Victor Shadurski)

From emergency to institution-building: Belarusian historical scholarship in exile after 2020 (by Nina Skepyan)

Institutional barriers to academic reintegration: the Irish context and Belarusian historical scholarship in exile (by Vadzim Holubeu)

Reactive by condition: why the exile model of Belarusian academia cannot sustain itself (by Hanna Vasilevich)

Competing interpretations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in contemporary national narratives (by Viktar Yakubau)

Digital authoritarianism and historians in exile: the disappearance of Belarus’s digital archives? (by Aliaksei Bratachkin)

Francysk Skaryna across national narratives: Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Czechia (by Aliaksandr Parshankou)

Studying resistance across Eastern Europe: toward a new analytical paradigm (by Tatsiana Astrouskaya)

Producing Belarusian history after 2020: how exile reshapes historical knowledge (by Kiryl Kascian)

Policy paper: Belarusian historical scholarship in exile, its current state and challenges (by Hanna Vasilevich and Maxim Karaliou)

New book in open access: 𝙄𝙣 𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙍𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙖𝙣: 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙍𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘿𝙚𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙈𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙣 𝙍𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙖 by Marius Turda

 New book in open access: 𝙄𝙣 𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙍𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙖𝙣: 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙍𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘿𝙚𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙈𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙣 𝙍𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙖 by Marius Turda 

Exploring debates on Romanian national character and race from the 1880s to the 1950s, Turda’s study demonstrates how racism and eugenics shaped policies of ethnic purification under the Antonescu regime. It argues that the Holocaust in Romania targeted both Jews and Roma as part of a broader biopolitical nationalism, and that the eugenic ideal of the “perfect” Romanian remained embedded in communist visions of the “new man” and “perfect” society. 

Read more and preorder your copy here: https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048573608/in-search-of-the-perfect-romanian

Webinar: Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine

  Join us for Webinar next Friday!

Central State Scientific and Technical Archives of Ukraine

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Free · registration required

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

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

See you next Friday, September 11!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Details: https://tinyurl.com/bdzjuf88

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

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

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

CFP:Fish out of place: how animals shape infrastructure

 

ESEH 2027 Panel Proposal

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

Deadline for Proposals: 20 September 2026

 Fish out of place: how animals shape infrastructure

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

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

 

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

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

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

Introduction - Ruben Zeeman - Transnational History Education and Backsliding Democracy

Regional Essays

1. Brazil

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

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

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

2. Hungary

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

b. Péter Bihari - History Teaching in Hungary

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

3. India

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

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

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

4. United States

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

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

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

Thematic Essays

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

Eckhardt Fuchs and Wibke Westermeyer

Censorship in School Education

Index.

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

 A new article in the Journal of Modern European History:

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

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

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

Read it here:

https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944261465602

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

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

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

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

The symposium invites contributions along the following lines of inquiry:

Axis 1 – Naming Utopia: Vocabulary and Interdisciplinary Typology

- epistemology of utopian terminology

- language shared across fields

- disciplinary differences and nuances

- common core underlying recourse to utopia

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

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

- evolution and persistence of topoi, particularly uses of space

- “war of imaginaries”

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

Axis 3 – Utopian Materializations: Spaces and Practices of Art

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

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

- experimental practices and modes of artistic organization

Submission Guidelines

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

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

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

Organizing Committee

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

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

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

Scientific Committee

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

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

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

Call for Abstracts | 2026 Graduate Conference "Cusanus Contra Bohemos. Revisiting Nicholas of Cusa,"

  Call for Abstracts | 2026 Graduate Conference

We are pleased to invite submissions for the 2026 Graduate Conference "Cusanus Contra Bohemos. Revisiting Nicholas of Cusa," hosted by students from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Charles University, Prague, on 19–20 November 2026.

The conference is one of the results of GA UK 334126 and will explore Nicholas of Cusa’s work in its broader historical and intellectual context, with particular emphasis on his political and legal thought and the interconnections between jurisprudence, political authority, ecclesiology, and sovereignty.

Topics of particular interest include:

• Cusanus and his contemporaries

• Law, theology, and political legitimacy

• Cusanus’ contribution to legal philosophy and jurisprudence

• Sovereignty and political authority in De Concordantia Catholica, De Auctoritate Praesidendi, and Epistola ad Bohemos

• Secular and ecclesiastical power in Cusanus’ political thought

• New approaches to his political and legal writings

• Cusanian mereology and the notion of Unity

All Cusanus-related contributions are welcome. We particularly encourage submissions from graduate students, doctoral candidates, and early-career researchers, while scholars at all career stages are warmly invited to apply.

🎓 Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Paul Richard Blum (Loyola University Maryland)

Lenka Karfíková (Charles University)

Andrea Fiamma (Academy of Sciences)

Witalij Morosow (Kues Academy)

📄 Submission Guidelines

Please submit an anonymous abstract of no more than 300 words, together with a short personal bio, to:

📧 cusanus.contra.bohemos@gmail.com

Submission deadline: 1 September 2026

Notification of acceptance: 10 September 2026

The conference will be held in person in Prague, Czech Republic. Please note that the conference is self-funded; travel and accommodation expenses cannot be reimbursed.

For further questions, please contact the organisitators at cusanus.contra.bohemos@gmail.com.

We look forward to receiving your submissions! 

Mateusz Binek: Uniwersalność mesjanizmu. Filozofia polityczna Augusta Cieszkowskiego [The Universality of Messianism: The Political Philosophy of August Cieszkowski].

 Mateusz Binek: Uniwersalność mesjanizmu. Filozofia polityczna Augusta Cieszkowskiego [The Universality of Messianism: The Political Philosophy of August Cieszkowski]. Wydawnictwo UMK 2025. ISBN: 978-83-231-6235-3

Książka stanowi krytyczną analizę filozoficzno-politycznych aspektów myśli jednego z najwybitniejszych przedstawicieli polskiego mesjanizmu – Augusta Cieszkowskiego. W pierwszej części prezentowanej monografii zastosowano metodę rekonstrukcji poglądów filozofa wraz ze wskazaniem na ich ideowe źródła. Badania te obejmują swym zasięgiem związki myśli Cieszkowskiego z filozofią Georga Wilhelma Friedricha Hegla, koncepcjami społecznymi Claude'a Henriego de Saint-Simona i Charles'a Fouriera oraz różnymi nurtami teologii i filozofii chrześcijańskiej.

W drugiej części pracy do analizy filozofii politycznej Cieszkowskiego wykorzystano siatkę pojęciową i metody wypracowane przez Carla Schmitta. Ich zastosowanie pomogło lepiej zrozumieć specyfikę badanych teorii przez ich interpretację w świetle takich ujęć teoretycznych, jak: uwzględnienie opozycji przyjaciel – wróg, pytanie o warunki możliwości ustanowienia globalnej wspólnoty politycznej, podkreślanie antropologicznego zakorzenienia koncepcji filozoficzno-politycznych. Zabieg ten pozwolił na ujawnienie, znajdujących się na marginesie omawianej twórczości, fundamentalnych twierdzeń i milcząco przyjętych przez Cieszkowskiego założeń, mających jednakże doniosłe konsekwencje teoretyczne. Rozprawę można odczytywać jako studium historycznofilozoficzne oraz próbę przeprowadzenia swego rodzaju testu hermeneutycznej mocy kategorii zawartych w dziełach Schmitta.

Tomasz Siewierski, Artur Wójcik: Karol Estreicher

 Tomasz Siewierski, Artur Wójcik: Karol Estreicher. Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy 2026. ISBN 978-83-8196-924-6

Karola Estreichera darzono uwielbieniem bądź szczerze nienawidzono i mimo że od jego śmierci minęło 40 lat, emocje wokół niego wciąż są żywe. Historia człowieka wyjątkowego, wielobarwnego, podejmującego trudne decyzje życiowe, które do dziś wywołują kontrowersje. Nie da się jednak zaprzeczyć jego wielkim zasługom dla polskiej kultury. Estreicher był połączeniem Indiany Jonesa z Franzem Maurerem. Był jedynym w swoim rodzaju obrońcą skarbów i detektywem od sztuki. Nie uznawał półśrodków, brał życie takim, jakim było, a w tych trudnych czasach, w jakich przyszło mu żyć, podejmował decyzje, które przyczyniały się do ratowania naszej historii. Z drugiej jednak strony, przyzwyczajony do pozycji swojej rodziny, uważał, że może więcej od innych. Jest to postać trudna do jednoznacznej oceny. Zupełnie inaczej był i jest postrzegany w swoim macierzystym środowisku krakowskim, a inaczej np. na salonach warszawskich. Opowieść o Estreicherze oparta jest na zróżnicowanym i obfitym materiale źródłowym: zebranych przez autorów relacjach, dokumentach z archiwów i bibliotek krakowskich, wrocławskich, warszawskich, londyńskich i paryskich.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: SUMMER ACADEMY ON "SCIENCE IMAGINES ITS FUTURE

 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: SUMMER ACADEMY ON "SCIENCE IMAGINES ITS FUTURE <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/science-imagines-its-future>"

Organizers: Lorraine Daston (MPIWG/University of Chicago), David Kaiser (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Erika Milam (Princeton University)

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) seeks ten Early Career Fellows (graduate students, postdocs, assistant professors or the equivalent) to participate in two summer academies to be held in Berlin on June 14–18, 2027 and June 26–30, 2028, with the support of the Balzan Foundation.

The topic of the summer academies will be how disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities have deliberated about how to invest their always scarce resources of time, talent, and money in projects that will shape research in an always uncertain future, especially the middle- and long-term future, from the next five years to the next century.

(See full description here. <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/science-imagines-its-future>)

The topic has been broadly construed, and research projects may focus on any discipline, epoch, or locale. Candidates may come from any country or discipline but should be able to present their work and discuss that of others in English.

Early Career Fellows will be given the opportunity to present their own work at the Summer Academies as well as to interview senior scholars and scientists on the topic. They will also play a central role in planning the second Summer Academy in 2028. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered.

Please read the full CALL and the application requirements here. <https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/news/call-applications-summer-academy-science-imagines-its-futures>

Applications should be submitted by November 1, 2026.

Pavel Hájek, Jiří Žahour: Věda a technika ve schwarzenberských knižních sbírkách [Science and Technology in the Schwarzenberg Book Collections]

Pavel Hájek, Jiří Žahour: Věda a technika ve schwarzenberských knižních sbírkách [Science and Technology in the Schwarzenberg Book Collections]. České Budějovice: NPÚ, ÚOP v Českých Budějovicích 2026. ISBN: 978-80-88446-14-9

Hradní a zámecké knihovny představují klenotnice uchovávající skutečné skvosty knižní a grafické produkce, šlechtou mnohdy shromažďované od středověku až do moderní doby. Zatímco rozsah knihovních fondů a výzdoba knihovních sálů reprezentovaly společenské postavení původních majitelů, vlastní skladba knižních sbírek zrcadlila kulturní rozhled, jazykové znalosti a individuální zájmy jednotlivých příslušníků šlechtických rodů. Podstatnou část šlechtických biblioték přitom tvoří odborná vědecká literatura, mnohdy zastoupená díly předních odborníků a vědců, jejichž spisy představují nejen klíčový pramen pro poznání vědeckého a technologického pokroku, ale umožňují nám také sledovat měnící se vnímání a chápání okolního světa a jeho zákonitostí.

Publikace Věda a technika ve schwarzenberských knižních sbírkách nabízí jedinečnou příležitost nahlédnout do rozsáhlých encyklopedických fondů schwarzenberských knihoven na zámcích Český Krumlov, Hluboká a Orlík. První část knihy přináší nejen nové poznatky o vývoji a postupném budování biblioték schwarzenberské primogenitury, ale vůbec poprvé představuje knižní sbírky všech generací starší krumlovsko-hlubocké větve rodu. Druhá část knihy, věnující se vývoji knihovních fondů orlické sekundogenitury, přináší detailní rozbor knižní sbírky maršála Karla I. Filipa jakožto zakladatele a hlavního budovatele orlické bibliotéky. Výzkum J. Žahoura a P. Hájka se přitom zaměřil primárně na identifikaci a poznání motivací vedoucích k akvizicím určitého spektra odborné literatury, ale i na poznání zájmu příslušníků rodu Schwarzenbergů o konkrétní vědní disciplíny v širších souvislostech s jejich životními osudy, zvolenými kariérami, podnikatelskými aktivitami, praktickými potřebami či ryze osobními zálibami.

Odborná kniha Věda a technika ve schwarzenberských knižních sbírkách vznikla v rámci výzkumného projektu Kořeny a plody evropské vědy v českých, moravských a slezských historických knihovních fondech (DH23P03OVV058), financovaného z prostředků Ministerstva kultury – Program NAKI III –program na podporu aplikovaného výzkumu v oblasti národní a kulturní identity na léta 2023 až 2030.

 

Obsah:

Úvodem

Schwarzenberské knihovny v literatuře a pramenech (Jiří Žahour – Pavel Hájek)

Schwarzenberský rod v proměnách času (Jiří Žahour)

Bibliotéky schwarzenberské primogenitury (Jiří Žahour)

Historie a vývoj schwarzenberské (primogeniturní) knihovny

Knižní sbírky krumlovsko-hlubockých Schwarzenbergů

Knižní sbírky Jana Adolfa I. & Marie Justiny ze Starhembergu

Knižní sbírky Ferdinanda Viléma & Marie Anny ze Sulzu

Knižní sbírka Marie Ernestiny z Eggenbergu

Knižní sbírky Adama Františka & Eleonory Amálie z Lobkowicz

Knižní sbírky Josefa I. Adama & Marie Terezie z Liechtensteinu

Knižní sbírky Jana Nepomuka I. & Marie Eleonory z Oettingen-Wallersteinu

Knižní sbírky Josefa II. & Pauliny z Arenbergu

Knižní sbírky biskupa Arnošta & kardinála Bedřicha

Knižní sbírky Jana Adolfa II. & Eleonory z Liechtensteinu

Knižní sbírky Adolfa Josefa & Idy Marie z Liechtensteinu

Knižní sbírka Karla Vavřince ze Schwarzenbergu

Knižní sbírky Jana Nepomuka II. & Terezie z Trauttmansdorff-Weinsbergu

Knižní sbírky Adolfa & Hildy z Luxemburgu a Nassau

Vědecká literatura krumlovsko-hlubockých Schwarzenbergů

Bibliotéky schwarzenberské sekundogenitury (Pavel Hájek)

Vývoj orlických zámeckých knihoven

Osobnost a život Karla I. Filipa ze Schwarzenbergu

Mládí a počátky kariéry

Válka s revoluční Francií

Diplomatická služba v Rusku a Francii

Povahové rysy Karla I. Filipa

Knihovna Karla I. Filipa ze Schwarzenbergu

Dějiny válek a vojenství

Vojenská teorie, taktika a výcvik

Dějiny států

Přírodní vědy

Filozofie

Encyklopedie

Závěrem

Seznam pramenů a literatury

Seznam zkratek

Rejstříky

Resumé

Call for chapter proposals: Polish Science Fiction: Literature, Film, and Cultural Legacy

 Call for chapter proposals: Polish Science Fiction: Literature, Film, and Cultural Legacy

deadline for submissions: 

October 15, 2026

full name / name of organization:

Agnieszka Gutthy

contact email: 

agutthy@selu.edu

Despite the international prominence of Stanisław Lem and, more recently, Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher, Polish science fiction and speculative literature remain strikingly underrepresented in English-language scholarship. Existing criticism tends to orbit a small number of canonical figures and a handful of frequently revisited texts, leaving a rich, historically complex tradition, spanning censorship-era political allegory, post-1989 transformation, contemporary literary crossover, and a distinct national cinema largely unexamined outside of Polish-language scholarship.

This edited collection seeks to address that gap. We invite chapter proposals that expand the scope of English-language engagement with Polish speculative fiction and film: introducing under-translated authors, revisiting canonical figures through new critical lenses, and treating Polish science-fiction cinema as a subject rather than solely through the lens of a single adaptation.

We welcome contributions from literary scholars, film scholars, translation studies specialists, and researchers in Slavic and Central European studies. We are especially interested in proposals that

move beyond Lem and Sapkowski as the sole representatives of the tradition.

Bring new theoretical frameworks (postcolonial theory, translation studies, media studies, gender studies, posthumanism) to bear on Polish speculative texts

Address film and other media as legitimate objects of study, not only as adaptations of literary source material

Situate Polish SF within broader Central/Eastern European or global speculative fiction discourse

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Historical Foundations

Science fiction under the Polish People's Republic

Censorship, allegory, and political subtext in Cold War-era SF

Fandom, zines, and early SF publishing culture in Poland

Lem Beyond Solaris

Underexamined works (e.g. The Cyberiad, His Master's Voice, Fiasco, Return from the Stars)

Lem's philosophy of science, epistemology, and technology

Lem as critic and theorist of the genre (Fantastyka i futurologia)

Post-1989 and Contemporary Voices

Jacek Dukaj, Jarosław Grzędowicz, Marek Huberath, and other contemporary authors

Speculative elements in literary/crossover fiction (e.g. Olga Tokarczuk)

Polish fantasy and its relationship to the SF tradition (including Sapkowski)

Translation, Circulation, and Reception

The politics and practice of translating Polish SF into English

Publishing history: which authors and works reach Anglophone readers, and why

Comparative reception of Polish SF in the West versus domestically

Polish Science Fiction on Screen

Polish-made dystopian and speculative cinema (e.g. Piotr Szulkin's tetralogy, Andrzej Żuławski)

Adaptation studies: Lem's Solaris and its cinematic afterlives, approached through fresh angles (production politics, reception history, or contemporary resonance) rather than as a straightforward novel-versus-film comparison

Polish SF's influence on or intersection with games and other media (e.g. CD Projekt Red)

 

Send an abstract of 300-500 words and a short (150-word max) academic biography by October 15, 2026, to Dr. Agnieszka Gutthy at agutthy@selu.edu

When accepted, full chapter (5000-8000 words including notes and bibliography) will be due May 15, 2027.

Lech Maligranda: Juliusz Schauder (1899–1943). Wydawnictwo UMK 2026.

 Lech Maligranda: Juliusz Schauder (1899–1943). Wydawnictwo UMK 2026. ISBN: 978-83-231-6343-5

Monografia jest pierwszą pełną i obszerną biografią jednego z najwybitniejszych polskich matematyków XX wieku – Juliusza Schaudera, wybitnego członka słynnej Lwowskiej Szkoły Matematycznej. Jego nazwisko na trwałe zapisało się w kanonie światowej matematyki. Książka odsłania nie tylko genialną twórczość naukową Schaudera w dziedzinie analizy funkcjonalnej i równań różniczkowych cząstkowych – w tym słynne twierdzenie Schaudera o punkcie stałym, bazy Schaudera, oszacowania Schaudera oraz jego wkład w teorię stopnia Leray–Schaudera – ale przede wszystkim dramatyczny życiorys matematyka.

Autor, prof. Lech Maligranda, przez wiele lat gromadził materiały archiwalne, listy, wspomnienia współpracowników oraz niepublikowane dotąd dokumenty. Monografia w sposób szczególnie dokładny przedstawia losy Schaudera w trakcie II wojny światowej, jego tragiczną śmierć w 1943 roku oraz historię jego córki – Ewy Schauder (1938–1991), która ocalała z Holokaustu.

Ta książka to nie tylko naukowa biografia wybitnego matematyka, lecz także głęboko poruszająca opowieść o geniuszu, pasji badawczej i ludzkim dramacie wpisanych w tragiczną historię Zagłady.

Petr Kadlec and Ivan Puš: Modernisation of Commercial Education in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918. Patterns, Trends, Processes.

Petr Kadlec and Ivan Puš: Modernisation of Commercial Education in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918. Patterns, Trends, Processes. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112242698

About this book

This publication has been peer reviewed. 

Were commercial schools a natural product of the modernising society or rather a precondition for its successful development and the state's well-being? In this monograph, the authors trace the trends, processes and circumstances of the creation of modern vocational schools, specifically of various types of commercial schools.

Lying at the edge of social and business history and history of education, the book leads the reader through Imperial Austria in the years 1848–1918, providing numerous examples of school practice. It explains the social, economic and political circumstances in which the commercial schools were created, and how far this was the initiative of merchants, municipalities, provincial authorities or the state administration. It also describes the opportunities that commercial schools offered to women. The final chapter discusses the impact of the Great War on schools, their pupils and their teachers.

This book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of education and social or business history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Where possible, it draws comparisons with other European countries, opening up reflections on the modernisation of Europe at that time, especially in Germany, Hungary and France.

Author / Editor information

Petr Kadlec, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Ivan Puš, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.

Call for Articles: “The Aesthetics of Contamination ”, 79 (2/2027)

 CFA: “The Aesthetics of Contamination ”, The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 79 (2/2027)

Submission deadline: 31 January 2027; Editors: Mădălina Diaconu (University of Vienna), Miloš Ševčík (Charles University, Prague)

The term contamination typically has negative connotations in biological, medical, and environmental contexts, while linguistics and literary studies employ it as a neutral technical term. While contamination has hitherto only exceptionally been applied to aesthetic contexts (Schneemann, Wolodzko), the planned issue aims to demonstrate that thanks to its ambivalence it can be used for a general aesthetic model that accounts for both the dynamics of complex structures (including aesthetic experience) and the negative effects of interactions. Both these aspects of a potential aesthetic model are highly relevant at the present: the theoretical paradigm of contamination can reveal covert, obscure influences in our age of global interconnectedness, when technology and new media have largely abolished physical distances, and the noxious dimension of contamination corresponds to the recent urge to elaborate a negative aesthetics (Berleant, Brady, Saito). In addition to conceptual clarifications, the issue welcomes analyses of processes of contamination in art and media, environmental experience, everyday life, and sociocultural processes.

Contamination’s ambivalence can be traced to its roots in Latin, where it literally means the neutral act of touching together and by extension came to denote staining, soiling, infecting, or corrupting through contact or mere association. Nowadays, the term contamination evokes physical and chemical processes, from heat induction and infiltration to their results – material alloys, emulsions, suspensions, and amalgams – which can be found both in artistic production and environmental processes. The figurative meaning of contamination is related to influences and by extension implies transfer, interpenetration, entanglement, coalescence, and dissemination, all processes facilitated by contiguity. Also, analysing a process in terms of contamination involves making clarifications regarding the homogeneity/heterogeneity of the interacting units, the degree of fusion, and the intensity of interaction.

The aesthetics of contamination encompasses dynamics and generativity, as well as the outcome of the interpenetration of elements. For example, the concept of contamination can shed new light on the nature of aesthetic experience, especially in relation to contemporary discussions about the atmospheric dimension of this experience. In this respect, the model of contamination revisits an aesthetic theory that endeavoured to locate the aesthetic experience in particular faculties. On the other hand, it is the object of aesthetic experience itself, be it a work of art, a non-artistic artefact, or a natural item, that takes on a dynamic, mutable character in terms of contamination. Last, but not least, a neutral understanding of contamination enables us to highlight the fluid boundaries and transitions between aesthetic and non-aesthetic experiences or art and non-art.

These advantages in applying the concept of contamination to aesthetic issues cannot abstract from the challenges posed by the concept itself: by definition, contamination involves indeterminacy and contingency. Contamination escapes intentionality and full control, both in terms of regulating interactions and anticipating their consequences; contaminations are irreducible to clear influences and deliberate imitations. On the contrary, contamination implies a diffuse spreading, confused alterations, an insidious seeping into the social fabric and creeping “below the radar”, subterranean correspondences, and accidental, even unconscious, borrowings. Processes of contamination are also characterized by accretion: contamination is transformed (often irreversibly) through the accumulation of small, long-unnoticed changes.

In general, contamination challenges analytical approaches; why contamination happens and how it works are less clear than its effects, which include internalized hybridity and transformation, the blurring of boundaries, and, eventually, the fusion (i.e., indiscernibility) of its previous elements. On the whole, the aesthetics of contamination echoes the pervasiveness of the aesthetic in late modernity and the “fluidity” of our age and resonates with contemporary philosophy’s growing interest in processes.

Possible research questions include the following:

Can aesthetic experience be described as a process of contamination and which further conceptual tools seem most appropriate for this description?

Is contamination always mutual or can it also remain unilateral? What is the relationship between contamination and the fusion of elements?

Can synesthesia be characterized as sensory contamination?

What is the relationship between contamination and atmosphere/ambiance? What role does emotional contamination play in the aesthetic experience (e.g., contagious sadness and laughter, attunement as atmospheric contagion in mass popular culture events, etc.)?

What impact does the contamination of values have on the aesthetic experience (e.g., when moral criteria influence environmental appreciation and political values, the assessment of social-aesthetic phenomena)? In particular, how can different values intermingle or collide in the appreciation of literally contaminated landscapes?

How can the model of contamination enrich theories about artistic production? Can collective artistic emulation be subsumed to contamination? What about the empathic identification of writers and actors with their characters?

In which ways can contamination shed new light on the theory of intermediality in art?

How can insights into spatial contamination (e.g., between a work of art and its environment) and temporal contamination (e.g., when authoritarianism, intolerance, and violence gradually “seep” into society) foster new approaches in aesthetics?

Submission deadline: 31 January, 2027.

Author Guidelines: We ask Authors to read our guidelines posted under the tab For Authors, as well as to double-check the completeness of each submission (please do not forget to collectively submit: the abstract, keywords, bibliography, and a biographical note about the author) before submitting.

Only complete submissions sent through the submissions page will be accepted—submission page: https://submissions.pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/index.php/PJA

All submitted articles are subject to double-blind reviews. Articles published in The Polish Journal of Aesthetics are assigned DOI numbers.

Robert T. Tomczak: Studenci z Rzeczypospolitej na Uniwersytecie w Bazylei w latach 1500–1800. Studium prozopograficzne [Students from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the University of Basel, 1501–1800. A prosopographical study].

Robert T. Tomczak: Studenci z Rzeczypospolitej na Uniwersytecie w Bazylei w latach 1500–1800. Studium prozopograficzne [Students from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the University of Basel, 1501–1800. A prosopographical study]. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University Press 2026. DOI: 10.14746/amup.9788323245278

 

Wprowadzenie (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/w/p/wprowadzenie_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Spis treści (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/s/p/spis_tresci_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Summary (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/s/u/summary_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Zusammenfassung (https://press.amu.edu.pl/pub/media/productattach/z/u/zusammenfassung_tomczak_studenci_z_rzeczypospolitej_2026_amup.pdf)

Książka Studenci z Rzeczypospolitej na Uniwersytecie w Bazylei w latach 1500–1800 stanowi pierwsze kompleksowe opracowanie poświęcone obecności Polaków i Litwinów w jednym z najważniejszych ośrodków intelektualnych Europy nowożytnej. Autor, wykorzystując metody prozopograficzne i ilościowe, rekonstruuje sieć kontaktów akademickich łączących Bazyleę z elitami Rzeczypospolitej oraz analizuje ich motywacje, pochodzenie społeczne, wyznanie, kierunki studiów i dalsze kariery. Praca ukazuje, jak wczesnonowożytna mobilność akademicka kształtowała przepływ idei, wiedzy i książek między Polską a Szwajcarią, a także jak stereotyp „hojnego Polaka” wpłynął na integrację studentów w środowisku reformowanym. To interdyscyplinarne studium łączy historię uniwersytetów, kultury i religii, wpisując dzieje polskich peregrynantów w szerszy kontekst europejskiej res publica litteraria.

Call for Papers: Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond

Call for Papers: Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond

An International Symposium of the Minescapes Research Project

Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague May 19-21, 2027.

We invite proposals for papers for an international symposium, Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond, to be held at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague on May 19–21, 2027. Proposals are due October 1, 2026 (see submission details below).

This symposium, organized by Tina Asmussen (German Mining Museum Bochum: Leibniz Research Museum for Georesources) and Pamela Smith (Center for Science and Society, Columbia University), with Sylva Dobalová and Martin Mádl (both Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences), is part of the ongoing series Minescapes: Socio-Natural Sites of Resource, Extraction, and Knowledge that investigates the complexity and dynamics of human-environmental interactions in mining landscapes using the concept of a “material complex.” Research on a material complex begins in a study of the natural materials and follows them through reciprocal interactions with human bodily practices, techniques, and skills into substances and objects that are given meaning, used, consumed, desired, and studied by human communities. Each of these stages—the materials; the human–material interactions via skilled practice; and the objects and subjects and their meanings in production, use, consumption, and afterlives—can and often do form self-contained sites of study and analysis. In contrast, the Minescapes events aim, through drawing upon the archives of nature (mines, forests, water systems) and society (archives, libraries, art collections), to bring together these often rich separate areas of study into a unified field in order to raise fruitful questions for individual disciplines as well as for the whole.

The Prague symposium brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine the material worlds of metals and minerals—following them from the geological and mineralogical conditions of their formation, through their extraction, smelting, processing, transport, and trade, into the objects, images, and substances they become, and on to their use, consumption, and afterlives. Central Europe—with its long and densely documented history of metal and mineral extraction, its merchant-capitalist enterprises, and its movement of materials across local and global networks—offers a rich setting for these questions, while contributions that extend the perspective beyond the region are equally welcome.

We welcome proposals from scholars in any discipline and at any career stage whose work speaks to the symposium theme. We are especially interested in contributions that bridge the disciplinary boundaries by which the study of metals and minerals has conventionally been divided. Relevant fields and approaches include, but are not limited to:

●       the history of art and art conservation, including technical art history and conservation science, with particular interest in early modern sculpture, metalwork, and the material culture of metals and minerals

●       the history of early modern science, technology, and medicine, including metallurgy, mineralogy, and alchemy

●       environmental, economic, and political-economic history, including the organization of mining, labor, capital, and trade

●       the history of mining and of mining knowledge

●       the natural sciences, including geology, geochemistry, geography, forest science, and materials science

By bringing these conventionally separate fields into conversation, the symposium aims to construct a more integrated history of art and making as human engagement with the materials of the natural environment.

Practical information

This symposium is generously supported by the Getty Foundation's Connecting Art Histories program, through the project The Material Complex of Copper in Central Europe and Beyond. In keeping with the program’s aims, the symposium seeks to bridge the historical geo-political divisions that have long separated research networks across Europe, and therefore especially encourages the participation of scholars based at Central and Eastern European institutions. Scholars from all regions and institutions are warmly invited to apply; please note, however, that the symposium's capacity to provide full financial support for travel and accommodation will be limited.

Proposals should include full name, current affiliation, and email address; a paper title; an abstract of no more than 300 words; a short CV (max. 2 pages with PhD or other terminal degree completion year or expected completion).

Submissions are due October 1, 2026, and should be sent to minescapes2027@gmail.com.

CFP: “Life Cycles under Socialist Regimes: Managing Gender Relations, Aging, and Health”

 The Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, invites paper proposals for the Workshop “Life Cycles under Socialist Regimes: Managing Gender Relations, Aging, and Health,” to be held on February 16, 2027, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

State socialism, as a political and economic system, was one of the major innovations of the twentieth century and became a global phenomenon in its latter half, with socialist regimes emerging across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. State socialism can be understood as a political regime characterized by single-party government, directed modernization under systemic governmentality, and the predominance of state property. From the 1950s onward, socialist governance increasingly embraced the notion that political, economic, and social lives could be organized and governed as closed systems. With the “scientific and technological revolution” integrated into the ideology as a new stage on the path to communism, the accumulation and application of knowledge became a central function of state socialist regimes, while holistic, systemic governmentality turned into a key feature of the ideology. The workshop will explore how socialist states sought to manage human life cycles through scientific knowledge, administrative practices, and institutional interventions. Focusing on gender relations, aging, and health, it will examine these fields as central dimensions of socialist biopolitics and as sites where broader models of governance and technocratic management were developed. Bringing together perspectives from conceptual, institutional, and political history as well as the social sciences, the workshop will investigate how socialist regimes attempted to organize social reproduction, welfare, health, and individual life trajectories between the 1950s and 1991. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the development and implementation of official policies concerning family, gender, demographic change, health, and aging; group and individual responses to official policies; the role of scientific research and expert communities in shaping socialist governance; international cooperation and the circulation of knowledge, expertise, and technologies; and the communication of scientific knowledge to broader publics. We are particularly interested in approaches that examine how scientific and technological visions influenced understandings of the human body, social reproduction, and socialist futures, including the role of techno-optimism, popular science, and the intersections between science fact and science fiction. The workshop will situate these developments within a global and comparative framework, paying particular attention to the circulation of ideas, institutions, and practices beyond national boundaries.

The workshop is part of the project Socialist Management in a Global Context: Technocratic Developments in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, 1955–1991, sponsored by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARIS). It is part of a series of four workshops, the results of which will be published together. The selection of papers will, hence, be based on their quality and coherence. Submissions addressing developments outside the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are explicitly encouraged.

Please submit a 300-word abstract and a short biography to PD Dr. Ivan Sablin (ivan.sablin@inz.si) by September 15, 2026. Notifications of acceptance are expected by the end of October. Invited participants will be expected to submit drafts of up to 7,000 words by February 1, 2027. The organizers will be able to provide accommodation to the participants but cannot cover their travel costs. See less

Dana Hašková: Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu

 Dana Hašková: Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu: Představitelé technických, přírodních a zemědělských věd [Russian White Emigration in Czechoslovakia: Representatives of Technical, Natural and Agricultural Sciences]. Praha: Academia, Slovanský ústav 2026. ISBN: 978-80-200-3697-1

Po revoluci v roce 1917 a následné občanské válce emigrovaly z území bývalé Ruské říše statisíce lidí. Přibližně třicet tisíc žilo i v meziválečném Československu.

Zvláštní skupinu této emigrace tvořila ruská vědecká a kulturní elita. V Československu tak působily stovky profesorů, pracovníků vysokých škol a vědců z nejrůznějších oborů.

Své odborné práce emigranti vydávali v českém i slovenském jazyce, publikovali v českém a slovenském periodickém tisku a zapojovali se do zdejšího vědeckého života. Badatelé věnující se tématu ruské emigrace se dosud zaměřovali především na představitele humanitních či uměleckých oborů. Činnost představitelů technických, přírodních a zemědělských věd zatím není podrobněji zdokumentována. V populárně-naučných publikacích a odborných článcích jsou zmiňováni pouze jednotlivci v souvislosti s výsledky své práce. Monografie Ruská bílá emigrace v Československu je tak prvním pokusem zmapovat činnost těchto techniků a přírodovědců během jejich pobytu v Československu. Uplatnili se zde jako pedagogové, v praxi i ve výzkumu a ve svých oborech mnohdy patřili ke špičkovým odborníkům. Předkládaná publikace z velké části vychází z dobového tisku, nekrologů, archivních materiálů, rodinných archivů a databáze udělených patentů. Citované dokumenty rovněž podávají svědectví o životě v emigraci a těžkostech, s nimiž se emigranti museli v běžném životě vyrovnávat.

CFP: Beyond Borders: Global Histories of Transboundary Rivers

 Beyond Borders: Global Histories of Transboundary Rivers

International Online Workshop

University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

November 19-20, 2026

 

More than 300 river basins cross international borders, providing freshwater, energy, transportation, food, and ecosystem services for billions of people. Yet transboundary rivers are far more than shared natural resources. They are political, technological, legal, ecological, and diplomatic spaces where states, engineers, scientists, international organizations, and local communities have negotiated competing visions of development, sovereignty, environmental protection, and cooperation.

Although transboundary rivers have attracted growing scholarly attention, research remains fragmented across disciplines. Environmental historians have explored changing human–river relationships; historians of technology have examined hydraulic engineering and infrastructure; historical geographers have analysed river landscapes and territorial change; scholars of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have investigated expertise and knowledge production; political scientists and scholars of international relations have focused on water diplomacy and international institutions; legal scholars have examined international water law; while hydrologists and water-governance researchers have developed sophisticated frameworks for understanding river basin management. Yet these conversations often do not intersect.

This workshop starts from the premise that understanding transboundary rivers requires genuine interdisciplinary dialogue. Rather than treating rivers simply as environmental systems or geopolitical boundaries, we invite participants to explore them as dynamic socio-environmental systems shaped simultaneously by ecology, infrastructure, science, law, diplomacy, economics, and politics.

Building upon the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) project An Environmental History of Transboundary Rivers in Cold War East-Central Europe, the workshop seeks to expand regional scholarship into a broader comparative and global conversation. It aims to establish an international interdisciplinary network dedicated to the historical study of transboundary rivers and to identify new directions for collaborative research at the intersection of environmental history, history of technology, geography, international law, political science, STS, and water governance.

 

We welcome contributions from scholars working in:

Environmental History

History of Technology

History of Science

Historical Geography

Science and Technology Studies (STS)

Water History

Environmental Humanities

Political Ecology

International Relations

International Environmental Law

Environmental Governance

Hydrology and Water Governance

Geography

Anthropology

Sociology

Environmental Planning

 

We welcome proposals on topics including, but not limited to:

Comparative histories of transboundary river basins

International river commissions and basin organizations

Environmental governance across political borders

Water diplomacy and international cooperation

Rivers during the Cold War

Hydraulic engineering, dams, and river regulation

Navigation and inland waterways

Flood protection and disaster management

Pollution, water quality, and environmental monitoring

Fisheries, wetlands, and aquatic ecosystems

Hydrological science, environmental expertise, and knowledge production

International organizations and shared waters

Climate change and the historical governance of river basins

Colonial and postcolonial river governance

Indigenous and local perspectives on transboundary rivers

Comparative and global approaches to river history

Rivers, sovereignty, and international environmental law

Methods and concepts for interdisciplinary river research

Studies covering all world regions and historical periods are welcome.

 

Format:

The workshop will be held in online format.

Rather than focusing exclusively on completed research, we particularly encourage proposals presenting original archival research, conceptual interventions, comparative perspectives, methodological reflections, and work in progress.

The workshop is designed to maximize discussion and exchange across disciplines. Each paper will receive substantial time for discussion, and the programme will conclude with a roundtable on future directions in the interdisciplinary study of transboundary rivers.

---

Submission

Please submit:

an abstract of 300–500 words

a short biography (100 words)

to: cesh@osu.cz

Submission deadline: 15 September 2026

Notification of acceptance: 1 October 2026

hybrid event: 10th Anniversary of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists

10th Anniversary of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists

We warmly invite you to join us in celebrating the Center’s 10th anniversary – a special occasion that marks an impressive success story.

When: Monday 27th of July 2026. Starting at 9.30am (Berlin time zone)

Where: Online via Zoom or in Presence at Paderborn University, L-Builduing Pohlweg 57, 33098 Paderborn

Since its foundation in 2016 by Prof. Dr Ruth E. Hagengruber<https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/ruth_e_hagengruber/> with the support of Svenja Schulze<https://www.svenja-schulze.de/>, then Minister for Science and Innovation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Center has developed into an internationally recognised illuminating exemplar of research.

Through groundbreaking publications, a wide range of high-calibre events, and innovative teaching and research formats, it has had a lasting impact on the visibility of women in the history of philosophy and science and has played a decisive role in reorienting academic discourse.

The anniversary offers an opportunity to look back on this development, to celebrate key milestones and to look ahead together to future projects.

The celebration will take place on July 27, 2026 from 9:30 – 12:00 (CEST) at Paderborn University. The event takes place in hybrid format. To access the zoom link please register at our indico page<https://indico.uni-paderborn.de/event/157/>.

Program:

Monday (July 27)

Room L3 204

9:30 – 12:00

Celebration – 10 Years Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists<https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/event/10th-anniversary-of-the-center-for-the-history-of-women-philosophers-and-scientists/>

Welcome

President of Paderborn University, Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer

Deputy Mayor of Paderborn, Sabine Kramm

Office Manager for Verena Mertens, Member of the European Parliament for the OWL Constituency, Hartwig Höschen

Managing Director of the Paderborn Economic Development Agency, Jürgen Janke

Birthday Greetings

Dean of Research of Paderborn University, Prof. Dr. Ilka Mindt

Executive Board of the IAPh e.v., Prof. Dr. Ma Theresa Payongayong

Women’s & Gender Research Network NRW, Dr. Corinna Bath

Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund, Prof. Dr. Dorothee Meister

Constitutive Member of ZenMeM, Peter Stadler

10 Years of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists

Prof. Dr. Ruth E. Hagengruber, Director

Honours

Deputy Directors 10 Years Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists

Project Digital Humanities Cooperation Partners

Music

Charlotte Michels: Deborah Henson-Conant (*1953)

Baroque Flamenco

Awarding Ceremony of the Elisabeth of Bohemia Prize

Laudatio: Prof. Dr. Kateryna Karpenko

Thanks to the Donator: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Detmers

Music

Charlotte Michels: Henriette Renié (1875-1956) Pièce Symphonique

Official Signing of two Memoranda of Understanding

with the University of the Philippines Diliman represented by Chancellor Prof. Atty. Edgardo Carlo L. Vistan II, Prof. Ma Theresa T. Payongayong, Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy Prof. Ruth Lusterio-Rico, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy Prof. Lilybeth Lumagbas.

with the Islamic University of Science & Technology (IUST), Kashmir, India, represented by Vice Chancellor Prof. Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, Assistant Professor Muzaffar Ali Malla, Dean Academic Affairs Prof. Sheikh Aijaz Bashir, and Dean of the School of Humanities & Social Sciences Prof. Afroz Bisati

Dr. Jil Muller

Assistant Professor, Post-doc Researcher

Philosophy Department, Paderborn University:

https://www.uni-paderborn.de/person/91668

Deputy Head and Researcher at the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists:

https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/about/team/

Chair: Prof. Dr. Ruth Hagengruber

Universität Paderborn

Raum TP 8.1.45 // Tel.: 05251 60-5034

Technologie Park 8

33100 Paderborn

Germany

Wojciech Baran: 𝗟𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗮 𝗮𝘂𝘅 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗶̂𝘁 𝗛𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲 𝗱𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗲 (𝟭𝟰𝟮𝟴–𝟭𝟰𝟯𝟬). 𝗘́𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗲𝘁 𝗲́𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲

 Wojciech Baran: 𝗟𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗮 𝗮𝘂𝘅 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗶̂𝘁 𝗛𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲 𝗱𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗲 (𝟭𝟰𝟮𝟴–𝟭𝟰𝟯𝟬). 𝗘́𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗲𝘁 𝗲́𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲. Brepols 2026. 

Plus d'Infos: https://bit.ly/4gCFW4K

Cet ouvrage propose un examen approfondi de la pensée théologique à Cracovie au XVe siècle à travers l’étude et l’édition critique des principia aux Sentences de Benoît Hesse de Cracovie (1389–1456), rédigés entre 1428 et 1430 à l’Université de Cracovie. L’analyse s’ouvre sur le rôle central des Sentences de Pierre Lombard dans la formation intellectuelle des facultés de théologie médiévales, avant de retracer la figure et l’œuvre de Benoît Hesse, théologien polonais méconnu. La partie principale de la monographie examine la fonction du principium dans le cadre institutionnel et pédagogique de la faculté de théologie cracovienne, tout en mettant en lumière les orientations doctrinales et les enjeux philosophiques qui se dégagent des textes de Hesse. En complément de cette étude, le volume offre une édition critique des principia, accompagnée d’un apparat des sources, permettant d’accéder à un corpus jusqu’ici difficilement accessible. Ce travail ouvre ainsi une fenêtre sur la culture théologique de Cracovie au XVe siècle, un domaine dont la majorité des recherches demeure encore largement confinée à la langue polonaise.

TABLE DES MATIÈRES

Remerciements

Abréviations

I. Introduction doctrinale

1. Introduction

2. Benoît Hesse de Cracovie – la personne et l’œuvre

2.1. Curriculum vitae

2.2. Les œuvres

Philosophie

Théologie

Œuvres d’attribution incertaine

3. Les principia aux Sentences à l’université de Cracovie

3.1. Rôle du principium à l’université

3.2. Structure du principium de Benoît Hesse

L’invocatio

La recommendatio Sacrae Scripturae

La quaestio et sa structure

La protestatio incluse dans la première question

Le cas exceptionnel du magister concurrens

La gratiarum actio

4. La pensée de Benoît Hesse de Cracovie

4.1. Le statut épistémologique et le rôle de la théologie

Les possibilités de la raison et le rôle de la foi

La vérité de la théologie

La philosophie est-elle utile ?

La valeur scientifique de la théologie

Vision de la théologie dans le creuset du débat

Conclusion : la théologie est science et sagesse

4.2. Création et son commencement

Conception de la création dans le creuset du débat

Conclusion : le monde n’a pas de commencement et n’est pas éternel

4.3. Motif de l’incarnation

Conclusion : propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis et incarnatus est

4.4. Efficacité et nécessité des sacrements

Conclusion : les sacrements portent en eux-mêmes la grâce

5. Les principia aux Sentences de Hesse sont-ils une simple répétition d’opinions déjà connues ?

II. Principes éditoriaux

1. L’attribution des principia

2. Les témoins des textes

3. Les manuscrits

A. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 1518

B. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 1519

C. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 1526

D. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 1531

E. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 2091

S. Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, 1538

G. Gniezno, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne, 166

H. Gniezno, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne, 165

4. Discussion stemmatique

4.1. Les groupes de manuscrits

4.1.1. Le groupe A–B–D

4.1.2. Le manuscrit S

4.1.3. Le groupe E–G–H

4.1.4. Le manuscrit C

4.2. Stemmata codicum

4.2.1. Premier principium (témoins A, S)

4.2.2. Deuxième principium (témoins B, C, S)

4.2.3. Troisième principium (témoins D, G, S)

4.2.4. Quatrième principium (témoins E, S, H)

5. Passages problématiques

6. Orthographe, ponctuation et apparats

III. Principia in quattuor libros Sententiarum – Édition critique

Abbreviationes

Principium in I librum Sententiarum

Principium in II librum Sententiarum

Principium in III librum Sententiarum

Principium in IV librum Sententiarum

Fontes

Bibliographie

Manuscrits

Tapuscrits

Éditions des œuvres de Benoît Hesse de Cracovie

Sources avant 1800

Sources après 1800

Indices