CFP Music, Migration, and the Exchange of Knowledge: The Baltics in Global Perspective

 Call for papers Music, Migration, and the Exchange of Knowledge: The Baltics in Global Perspective

Second Bicontinental Symposium of The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, Vilnius–New York

Vilnius, 25–26 November 2027, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre

New York, 19–20 April 2028, The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, CUNY

Call for Papers

In 2027 and 2028, The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation will host a bicontinental symposium, coorganized in partnership with the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. The central question of this symposium is how the migration of peoples as well as their ideas, practices, and cultural artifacts has shaped the epistemic systems through which musical knowledge is produced, transmitted, and understood across different territories. The symposium focuses specifically on the migration of musical knowledge to and from the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—from the late nineteenth century onward. 

Drawing on theoretical discourses of migration in music and culture, the symposium considers how large-scale movements of peoples profoundly transformed musical life during the twentieth century. Migration from the Baltics was often shaped by political upheavals, particularly during and after the First and Second World Wars, when musicians, scholars, and cultural agents sought refuge from wars, totalitarian regimes, and occupations. In their new host countries, these individuals encountered musical environments and traditions that contributed to processes of cultural exchange, internationalization, and the transformation of musical knowledge.

Scholars from all disciplines whose work engages with music in specific and broader cultural contexts are invited to submit proposals addressing the following topics:

Musical and musicological knowledge created in the context of displacement and exile

Historical transformations in the exchange of musical knowledge

The role of intellectual and scholarly networks in the creation, dissemination, and circulation of musicological knowledge across geographical areas

The impact of migration on institutional collaborations and networks, including the relationship between institutional and individual exchanges

The role of women, Indigenous peoples, and other often underrepresented groups in the production and transmission of musical knowledge

The influence of migration and exile experience on academic, popular, pedagogical, and other forms of musical thought

We hope to receive proposals that seek to examine diverse forms of musical knowledge exchange, including academic, popular, pedagogical, and religious aspects.

This is the second edition of the bicontinental symposium by The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation, following its first event on musical exchanges between Spain and the Americas, organized in cooperation with the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Barcelona) in 2024/2025.

Convenors & Coordination:

Tina Frühauf (The CUNY Graduate Center / RILM, New York, USA)

Rima Povilionienė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania)

Scientific Committee:

Tina Frühauf (The CUNY Graduate Center / RILM, New York, USA)

Rima Povilionienė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania)

Stefan Keym (Institute of Musicology of the Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany) 

Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak (Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland)

Rūta Stanevičiūtė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania)

Jānis Kudinš (Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Riga, Latvia)

Brigitta Davidjants (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn, Estonia)

 

The bicontinental symposium will take place in person in Vilnius and New York:

Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (LMTA)

Gedimino pr. 42

10001 Vilnius, Lithuania

www.lmta.lt

 

The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation

CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 3108

New York, NY 10016-4309

https://brookcenter.gc.cuny.edu/

 

We welcome proposals for individual papers and whole panels in English. For individual papers, please submit abstracts of 200 words. For the panel proposal, please submit a 200-word panel abstract along with abstracts for individual papers. The abstract should be accompanied by a short biography, including affiliation (max. 80 words). 

Proposals should be submitted through the following form https://forms.gle/kHGemRJJLCtBUbMG7 by 15 March 2027. Participants must indicate whether they want to participate in the Vilnius symposium in 2027 or in the New York symposium in 2028. All applicants will be notified by 1 May 2027.

There is no conference registration fee.

The selected papers will be invited for publication. 

Please direct any questions to cmrd@gc.cuny.edu 

The conference organizers look forward to receiving your submissions!

Contact Information

The Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation

CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 3108

New York, NY 10016-4309

Contact Email

cmrd@gc.cuny.edu

CFP: STAND Conference 2027 – "Asymmetries of Power in Science Diplomacy"

 CFP: STAND Conference 2027 – "Asymmetries of Power in Science Diplomacy" (Lisbon, 21-23 July 2027) [Extended Deadline]

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the Call for Papers for the upcoming STAND Conference 2027. Please note that the submission deadline has been extended to 15 November 2026.

-Conference: STAND Conference 2027: Asymmetries of Power in Science Diplomacy

-Dates: 21–23 July 2027

-Location: Lisbon, Portugal (NOVA FCSH, Campolide Campus)

-Submission Deadline: 15 November 2026 (Extended)

-Submission Email: dgm@fct.unl.pt (Subject: STAND Conference 2027)

Looking forward to receiving your proposals.

Best wishes,

Jaehwan Hyun (Communications Officer, DHST Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy)

======================================================================

CALL FOR PAPERS

STAND Conference 2027: Asymmetries of Power in Science Diplomacy

Lisbon, Portugal, 21 to 23 July 2027

International relations have entered an "age of disruption," as it was termed by the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in their 2025 joint report on science diplomacy. In this context, the potential of science diplomacy solely as a tool of cooperation is being increasingly questioned in the face of divisive nationalisms, destabilizing technologies, and mounting geopolitical competition.

Recent historical research has shown that when experts, politicians, diplomats, activists, and other actors come together, they bring national and local interests that must be negotiated with the ideals and practices of global cooperation. Moreover, these negotiations do not take place on neutral ground, and historical research has demonstrated how asymmetries of power and hierarchies of knowledge fundamentally shape the international arena. Historical approaches can provide context for contemporary tensions in the discourse on science diplomacy, providing nuanced and critical perspectives for scholarship and policymaking.

The Commission on Science, Technology, and Diplomacy (STAND) of the Division of History of Science and Technology (DHST/IUHPST) wishes to discuss these matters in its next international conference on Asymmetries of Power in Science Diplomacy, which is jointly organized with the NOVA University of Lisbon, in a partnership between the Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT) at NOVA School of Science and Technology (NOVA FCT), and the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI) at NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH). It will take place at NOVA FCSH, Campolide Campus, in Lisbon, Portugal, from 21 to 23 July 2027.

We welcome proposals that critically address power dynamics in current and past international negotiations on science, technology, medicine, and related fields, considering:

The political, economic, and cultural integration of regional and national spaces across the Global North/South and East/West divides, as well as within each bloc

The design and implementation of cooperation and assistance programs to build technological infrastructure, scientific capability (including exchange student programs), public health (e.g. vaccination campaigns), etc.

The coordination of efforts to contain transnational threats, such as cyberattacks, pandemics, nuclear proliferation, bioterrorism, pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change or existential AI risks

Formal and informal imperialist relations, including continuities and discontinuities from colonial to postcolonial times

The definition and imposition of standards for scientific nomenclature, units, concepts, theories, practices, instrumentation, etc.

We are interested in looking at the roles played not only by individuals, but also by expert organizations (universities, academies, professional societies) and non-state actors (national and international NGOs, the private sector, civil society initiatives). Likewise, we encourage proposals that consider the agency of women, indigenous peoples, and other historically underrepresented or marginalized communities.

[SUBMISSION GUIDELINES]

Please send us an abstract (150 to 300 words), including proponents' name(s) and affiliation(s) by email to:

Email: dgm@fct.unl.pt (with subject: STAND Conference 2027)

Extended Deadline: 15 November 2026

The STAND Commission remains committed to finding ways to support in-person attendance for scholars in need, including those at early career stages.

Call for papers: Carbon Cultures: Practices, Visualities and Material Ecologies in the Fossil Age

 Call for papers: Carbon Cultures: Practices, Visualities and Material Ecologies in the Fossil Age, Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Universität Kassel, 04.03.2027 - 05.03.2027, Deadline 30.11.2026

The research center "Rohstoffwelten - Kulturen im Umbruch", a Käte Hamburger Kolleg at the University of Kassel, investigates how societies constitute, organize, and transform their relations with raw materials. Rather than treating resources as given material objects or as neutral inputs into economic processes, the center approaches them as part of historically specific “resource worlds”: configurations in which material properties and infrastructures intersect with institutions, power relations, social practices, knowledge, technologies, cultural meanings, and imaginaries. Bringing together perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, the center examines how such resource worlds emerge and stabilize, how they organize access, use, and distribution, and how they are contested and transformed. Its four Profile Areas – Raw Material Cultures, Raw Material Practices, Raw Material Regimes, and Critique/Reflection – provide integrative, interdisciplinary, connected, and complementary perspectives on these processes.

The center’s first thematic year, Carbon Culture, takes the fossil foundations of modern societies as its common point of departure. Coal, oil, and gas have not simply supplied energy to otherwise independently developing societies; their extraction, circulation, and use have become deeply embedded in infrastructures, institutions, patterns of production and consumption, everyday practices, forms of social reproduction, and cultural meanings and imaginaries. Carbon Culture therefore refers to the historically specific social formations through which fossil resources have become constitutive of modern ways of life and societal organization. The first thematic year asks how these fossil-based resource worlds emerged and became institutionalized, why they have proven so persistent despite mounting ecological, technological, political, and geopolitical pressures, and how they are currently being challenged, adapted, and recomposed. Rather than assuming a linear transition from a fossil to a post-fossil order, the center examines the tensions between persistence and transformation and the ways in which existing and emerging resource worlds become layered, recombined, fragmented, or replaced.

Workshop Description:

This workshop is organized by the Profile Area Raw Material Cultures, Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez and Dr. Katrin Nahidi, at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Rohstoffwelten, University of Kassel. We use carbon culture as an analytical category to situate modern and contemporary art and cultural production within the fossil resource worlds of their creation, circulation, and valuation. These conditions have long been treated as neutral background rather than as culture. This workshop takes that invisibility itself as its object of study. To this end, we propose establishing a research field called Carbon Art History, a rewriting of artand cultural history through the lens of carbon culture. It asks how fossil resources came to be perceived as a natural condition instead of a political project that produces legitimation, visual regimes, and orders of knowledge.

Carbon culture produces more than just narratives; it produces a material culture in the most literal sense: artworks, exhibitions, archives, and the apparatuses through which images and collections are created, transported, and preserved, and the material and epistemic conditions of producing art. Methodologically, the workshop builds on Energy Humanities, extending them specifically into art history as cultural history. It brings together approaches from archaeology, museum studies, material cultural studies, and visual culture, combining them with close readings of artistic and archival production.

As an emerging field, Carbon Art History cannot rely solely on Energy Humanities. It requires a genuinely interdisciplinary methodology that combines materialist approaches with postcolonial and decolonial material histories. Drawing on posthumanist thought, we shift attention from human actors to the material life of resources, artifacts, and images. However, we hold this shift accountable to questions of power. In our approach, materiality is never abstracted from the colonial and postcolonial histories through which specific resources, sites, and images became extractable, valuable, or invisible.

The workshop employs several complementary lenses. A sociopolitical and historical lens asks about the entanglements between extractivism, petromodernity, archaeology, and museum formation, and how coloniality persists as a structure while manifesting in different forms across various modes of extractivism. A material lens examines the ecological footprint of image production and the underlying resource dependencies of photography and cultural heritage. A political lens traces how oil economies have shaped visuality, cultural and artistic infrastructures.

Considering these different accounts, the workshop asks what it means to (re)write a decolonial material history of art, one that acknowledges the agency of things and the colonial and postcolonial conditions of their extraction, circulation, and preservation. How do material and discursive registers co-produce each other in these processes? Aesthetics may become complicit with fossil ways of life through these very material entanglements, without losing sight of the specific historical, geopolitical, and institutional conditions under which carbon cultures take shape. At the same time, the arts constitute their own mode of knowledge production, which can challenge and unsettle dominant epistemologies and has the potential to resist and dismantle dominant forms of fossil modernity. This tension serves as the workshop’s productive starting point. Thus, the workshop aims to test the analytical potential of carbon culture across regions, periods, and media, as well as to develop shared concepts and methods for Carbon Art History.

Guiding Questions:

- How does carbon culture manifest itself in aesthetics, narratives, and worldviews across different historical and regional contexts? What new periodization does this reveal?

- What visual, material, and media cultures have formed around fossil and carbon-based raw materials, and how have these cultures shaped perceptions of energy and modernity?

- How does coloniality persist as a repeatable yet variable structure across different extraction regimes?

- Which cultural blind spots, silences, and exclusions have allowed carbon cultures to persist unnoticed as merely infrastructural?

- How have oil economies built, funded, and shaped cultural infrastructures, such as museums, biennials, and collecting institutions?

Information and requirements for participants:

The workshop offers space for up to 12 participants, and the call is addressed to researchers at postdoctoral level and above. A publication is planned to follow the workshop. Prospective contributions should be presented and discussed during the sessions. Limited funds are available to support travel and accommodation.

Application modalities:

Applicants are invited to submit a 250-word abstract and a 150-word bio to rohstoffwelten@uni-kassel.de by 30 November 2026 as a single PDF including the title, abstract, and short bio, affiliation, and contact details. If the abstract is accepted, a five-page paper draft will be required for circulation among workshop participants in advance.

Call for papers: Humans, Animals, Nature: Everyday Life in (Post-)Conflict Societies in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus since 1989

 Call for papers: Humans, Animals, Nature: Everyday Life in (Post-)Conflict Societies in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus since 1989

The Early Career Researchers of the GSOSES/UR are pleased to inform you about their 8th Annual Graduate Workshop. The workshop will focus on the topic 'Humans, Animals, Nature: Everyday Life in (Post-)Conflict Societies in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus since 1989'. It will take place from February 4-5, 2027, in Regensburg. The deadline for paper submissions is 20 November, 2026.

The Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at the University of Regensburg, in cooperation with the Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World, is pleased to announce the upcoming 8th Graduate Workshop.

As we were drafting this call for papers, travellers from a train from the east to the west of Ukraine were forced to get off in the middle of the night and seek for shelter from a Russian airstrike. This has become part of everyday life for many Ukrainians for the past four and a half years. What struck one of the observers was that small children, as well as pets, were silent: no cries, no barks, no meows. Similar scenes could be witnessed in Bosnia or Chechnya, in Kosovo or Georgia, in Nagorno-Karabakh or Transnistria, and elsewhere in the region. Everyday life does not end after the first airstrikes or the first burst of machine-gun fire. It continues. But is it still “normal”? Can we still speak about everyday life during armed conflict and afterwards for people, animals, and their environment affected and altered by war?

War does not simply interrupt everyday life but transforms how it is experienced and organised. Research on “everyday war” and on violence becoming incorporated into the “ordinary” has shown how people across generations, genders, and social and geographical settings negotiate and reconstruct “normal” life during and after armed conflict. Alongside this focus on human experience, posthumanist thought has prompted scholars to reconsider animal agency and to place animals at the centre of narratives of everyday life. Beyond human–animal relations, “warfare ecology” treats preparations, war, and postwar activities as overlapping stages with consequences for both natural and social systems. Recent studies further show how landscapes and ecosystems both shape and are transformed by military conflict, how wartime changes in soundscapes reveal its effects on human and non-human life, and how war waste leaves ecological legacies extending well beyond the end of fighting.

Building on these perspectives, this workshop seeks to explore how military conflicts transform natural, cultivated, extractive, and engineered environments, how people perceive and use war-affected landscapes, and how ecological damage and efforts at restoration continue to shape everyday life during and after armed conflict. Rather than asking only how war destroys everyday life, we ask how it is reconfigured through and after military conflict, and whether it can still be understood as “normal”. Over two days, we aim to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among early-career scholars, including doctoral researchers and postdocs working across history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, literary studies, film studies, environmental studies, and human–animal studies, and related fields. We welcome contributions addressing any of these dimensions, as well as their intersections.

We invite contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes:

(1) “normality” and the normalisation of everyday life during and after armed conflict, across age, gender, and place;

(2) animals’ experiences during and after armed conflict, including the everyday lives of pets, zoo animals, stray animals, farm animals, and wild animals, as well as human–animal relations, trauma, care, and adaptation;

(3) the “everyday” of nature, including the destruction, transformation, and restoration of war-affected environments as well as the perception and use of nature in society;

(4) outsiders’ perspectives on everyday life in (post-)conflict societies, including international news media and accounts by diplomats, intelligence officers, humanitarian volunteers, travellers, occupying soldiers, and mercenaries and foreign combatants;

(5) visual representations in film, graphic novels, survival computer games, and other art forms and cultural productions.

 

Practical information

Date: 4–5 February 2027

Venue: University of Regensburg and online

The workshop will be held in English.

The organisers in Regensburg will cover accommodation costs and can contribute to travel costs.

Submission

To apply, please submit:

an abstract (250–300 words and 5 keywords), and

a brief biographical note (approximately 100 words)

in a single PDF document by 20 November 2026 to: gsoses.conference@ur.de.

Applicants will be notified of the outcome by 30 November 2026.

The deadline for submitting full papers is 22 January 2027. Details will be communicated to approved participants. The papers will be circulated prior to the workshop.

Organisers:

Rebecca Fisch, Predoctoral Researcher, MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Bleona Kurteshi, PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology

Oleksandr Nadtoka, PhD Candidate in Southeast and East European History

Renjie Xiong, PhD Candidate in Southeast European History

Call for papers: ‘Beyond Pavlov: Understandings of Psychological Distress in Eastern Europe’

 Call for papers: ‘Beyond Pavlov: Understandings of Psychological Distress in Eastern Europe’

An International 2-day symposium to take place at the University of Warwick (UK), 13-14 May 2027

Deadline for the Submission of Abstracts: 1 January 2027

The figure of Ivan Pavlov has continued to loom large in histories of the psy-disciplines under communism. The rejection of psychoanalysis in favour of a Pavlovian behaviourist model in the Soviet Union, as well as many parts of Eastern Europe after WWII, has long distinguished socialist mental health care from Western psychiatric practices. The ‘Pavlovisation’ of science and medicine in the Soviet sphere of influence has been widely linked to communist psychiatry’s neglect of the mental realm in favour of physiological explanations and its isolation from Western developments. Yet, as scholars have recently begun to show, political pressures did not stamp out a plurality of approaches to the mind under state socialism. Contesting the tendency to see the socialist path of psychiatric care as starkly distinct from the West, recent histories have uncovered a continuing interest in psychological experience and a body of scientific research on the question of traumatised consciousness. While recognising the constraints placed on medical experts in the region, this symposium asks what might be missed in understanding East European psy-expertise solely through the lens of Pavlovian orthodoxy? This 2-day symposium will bring together scholars from different disciplinary and area specialisms to consider how psy-experts in the region have challenged, revised or expanded Pavlovian paradigms.

Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Benjamin Zajicek, Towson University

 

The organisers invite abstracts for papers that address the following questions: 

What were the limits of Pavlovian theory’s influence on institutional practices and everyday experiences of distress, rehabilitation, and social reintegration?

How did interpretations of Pavlov’s teaching differ across the Soviet republics and/or the Eastern Bloc? How did specific local contexts shape research, diagnosis, and the treatment of psychological distress within caregiving and punitive institutions?

What other paradigms did Soviet and Eastern European medical and scientific experts deploy in understanding the psychological repercussions of revolution, war, displacement, famine, and state repression? 

How did medical and scientific experts’ understandings of Pavlov’s legacy shift over time?  What changes took place in how experts in the region understood the relationship between mind, body and environment?  

To what extent did transnational networks and debates in the psy‑sciences impact understandings of mental health and illness in the region, and vice versa?

What meanings did Pavlovian concepts acquire in popular culture and in first person accounts? What overlaps and/or tensions existed between cultural and medical understandings of Pavlov’s theories?

The symposium is part of the Wellcome-funded research project: ‘Traumatised Minds: Neurosis and Hysteria in Soviet Medicine and Culture, 1917-1953’. 

Organisers: Anna Toropova, Olga Smolyak, and Tom Stevens (University of Warwick)

 

Please send a paper title, an abstract of 300 words and a brief academic biography (200 words) to anna.toropova.1@warwick.ac.uk by the 1st of January 2027. Limited funding is available to assist presenters with travel and accommodation costs (priority will be given to PhD students, early career scholars and those from institutions without research funds). Please specify whether you require financial assistance to attend in your proposal.

Scientiae 2027 (Torino, 17-19 June): CFP Open

 Scientiae 2027 (Torino, 17-19 June): CFP Open

Dear all, the 14th annual meeting of *Scientiae* will take place in Torino, Italy. We are delighted to accept proposals, and we are keenly aware of the importance of continuing our forum, especially for its proven suitability for collaboration between senior and early career historians.

While the brand of *Scientiae* has grown considerably, demonstrating its ongoing relevance, every past attendee knows that ‘interdisciplinary’ is not just a keyword for us, but a productive look at epistemic practices in the transformation of learning. Likewise, our methodology does not merely reflect a variety or another of history of knowledge, but also considers breakdowns or blind spots, image-making, the supernatural, and it is highly conducive to a global perspective.

The congress is open to all topics related to the 1400-1800 period. Some papers will be strongly theoretical, others deeply archival, but in any case researchers who meet at *Scientiae* come prepared for *significant discussions*. The assemblage of sessions will naturally build on our desire to promote a thematic exchange between fields of study, rather than a preformed sense of proximity, be it disciplinary, academic, or geographic.

As the programme begins to coalesce, we are proud to announce keynotes by *Miguel Ángel Granada* and *Eva Del Soldato*. Our second “Jim Bennett Lecture” will be presented by *Boris Jardine*. Our invited speakers include André Goddu, Oded Rabinovitch, Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, Vladimir Brljak, Daniel Špelda, Bernd Roling, Catherine Abou-Nemeh, Barbara Bienias, and many others. Stay tuned for more!

The organizing committee includes Barbara Bienias, Sofia Degli Esposti, Lisa Klotz, Stefano Gulizia, and Lucie Storchová. The organization will choose 3 bursaries from graduate student submissions and their evaluation will be based on merit alone. 

We envision three ways to join:

   - Individual, 20-minute papers: Please submit a descriptive title,    200-word abstract, and one-page CV.

   - Complete panels: Same as above for each paper, plus 200-word rationale    for the panel. Maximum four presenters, including chair (and/or respondent).

   - Workshops or seminars: One-page CV for each session leader, plus    200-word plan explaining the topic's suitability, and its techniques or    resources.

Submit your proposal *before January 31st, 2027*, at sgulizia@gmail.com, and direct there any inquiry, as well. There will be no extension of this deadline. All results — acceptances and bursaries — will be communicated by February 20th, at the latest. As always, participation to *Scientiae* is contingent on our registration fee, which is our sole source of revenues.

We are looking forward to welcoming you in Torino!

Call for papers: War Virtues in Science and Scholarship: Historical perspectives on cultivating the images of combat-ready scholars and scientists

 Call for papers: War Virtues in Science and Scholarship: Historical perspectives on cultivating the images of combat-ready scholars and scientists. Research Centre for the Political Epistemologies of Central and Eastern Europe, Erfurt, 08.07.2027 - 09.07.2027,  20.12.2026

The concept of virtue has become an important analytical tool within the History of Science. Scholars employing this concept have shifted their focus from scientific ideas themselves to the practices involved in cultivating the “epistemic virtues” that made the emergence of these ideas possible. In our workshop, we aim to examine how military and, more broadly, combat-mobilisation discourses have been linked to the promotion of visions of science and scholarship shaped by the logic of war.

War Virtues in Science and Scholarship: Historical perspectives on cultivating the images of combat-ready scholars and scientists

The concept of virtue has become an important analytical tool within the History of Science. Scholars employing this concept have shifted their focus from scientific ideas themselves to the practices involved in cultivating the “epistemic virtues” that made the emergence of these ideas possible. By “virtue,” this scholarship understands cultivated traits required to be considered a “good scholar” or a “good scientist” in different historical periods. Developing this approach further, recent historiography has proposed extending the application of “virtue” as an analytical tool beyond the study of purely epistemic aspects of knowledge production and using it to analyse the influence of large-scale rapid political and social transformations on internal processes within science and scholarship. Building on recent developments in political epistemology, our conference aims to advance this line of inquiry.

We propose to examine how military and, more broadly, combat-mobilisation discourses have been linked to the promotion of visions of science and scholarship shaped by the logic of war. We ask how, in various historical, regional, political, and social contexts, scientists and scholars have been compelled or encouraged to make “defeating the enemy” and “defending sovereignty” central elements of their academic practice, as well as which “virtues” they were expected to cultivate in order to meet these demands. We are especially interested in how “war virtues” transformed both the sciences and the humanities; in what ways these “virtues” reshaped academic institutions; what influence they had on the drawing of boundaries between science and political power; and what forms of resistance to the promotion of “war virtues” emerged in different academic contexts.

We warmly welcome papers addressing various aspects of this topic, as well as those proposing new perspectives on “war virtues” as an analytical tool. The conference will focus primarily on modern contexts, but we also welcome papers dealing with early modern, medieval, and ancient topics. Alongside European and US-American subjects, we encourage contributions addressing non-“Western” contexts.

Please send your abstract (max. 300 words) and a short CV or a link to your online profile by 20.12.2026 to wissenschaftsgeschichte@uni-erfurt.de

The conference is organised by the research centre Political Epistemologies of Central and Eastern Europe (PECEE).

For questions, please contact Dr. Alexej Lochmatow: alexej.lochmatow@uni-erfurt.de

Call for papers: Epistemologies of the Hinterland: The Making of Rural Knowledge in the 20th Century and beyond

Call for papers: Epistemologies of the Hinterland: The Making of Rural Knowledge in the 20th Century and beyond

The publication project aims to analyze epistemic complexes that defined rurality along several hierarchical divides: civilization/nature; science/belief, the individual/community; urban/rural; system/habit; measurement/experience; rationality/emotion etc. We want to bring together case studies from different contexts of rurality that offer a new perspective on rural knowledge. We are looking forward to proposals that discuss the “how” of knowledge production in all its contradictions and inherent power relations. 

15 November 2026: abstract submission deadline

June 2027: in-person author workshop in Vienna

For more details see below.

 

Call for papers

Epistemologies of the Hinterland: The Making of Rural Knowledge in the 20th Century and beyond

Today’s rural environments mirror long historical processes. Especially since the industrial revolution, they can be conceived as the outcome of social, administrative-technological, political, and scientific interventions in a taken-for-granted nature. In our publication project we aim to reconsider these interventions as epistemic complexes that defined rurality along several hierarchical divides that also carved out European modernity: civilization/nature; science/belief, the individual/community; urban/rural;

system/habit; measurement/experience; rationality/emotion etc.

Focusing on examples from the area of rurality, we want to search for encounters between bodies of knowledge that have historically been perceived as incommensurable and look at the practices, subjects and objects of knowledge production. We envision analyses of incommensurability narratives to open perspectives on developments since the early 20th century, but also on the most recent global climate debates and their often very local pinpoints as well as on recent political attempts to re-naturalize complex histories as national cultures.

We want to bring together case studies from different contexts of rurality that offer a new perspective on rural knowledge. At the centre of our attention is on the “how” of knowledge production in all its contradictions, perceived incommensurabilities and inherent power relations. We are focusing mainly on the 20th century, with some sojourns into the 21st century, and on Europe situated within its imperial, colonial, and global context, and the neo-national backlash of re-naturalizing complex histories as national cultures. The significance of science is a central, but not the only aspect.

We are seeking to publish the contributions as a special issue of an international peer-reviewed journal such as Knowledge or Science in Context. 

Topics can include but are

not limited to:

- researching rurality from different disciplinary perspectives

- relations between the researchers and the researched

- historicity of wilderness, nature, and rural spaces

- knowledge production and gender

- hygiene and eugenics in colonial contexts

- knowledge production about precarious agricultural regions (mountains, tundra)

- agricultural modernization

- education in rural areas

- environment, growth and the EU

- global aspects of climate debates and their local contexts

- media and knowledge dissemination

To ensure a concise and coherent publication, we will organize two meetings (online and in person) to work on questions and concepts, drafts and pre-circulated papers. The author workshop will take place in Vienna in June 2027.

Preliminary timetable:

15 November 2026: abstract submission deadline

December 2026: online meeting over concept of special issue

June 2027: in-person author workshop in Vienna 

Please send your abstract of 500 words max. to dietlind.huechtker(at)univie.ac.at. 

The deadline for abstracts is the 15th November 2026.

Image:  Unkown author, One of the new pavilions of the University of Agriculture, pl. Grundwaldskim in Wrocław, 1967, © Wikimedia Commons.

CFP: Science in the Field: People, Practices and Environments in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union

 CFP: Science in the Field: People, Practices and Environments in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union (Fribourg, 14–15 June 2027)

Submission deadline: 1 December 2026

We invite proposals for an international conference on the history of scientific fieldwork in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. The conference will examine how knowledge was produced through encounters with particular environments and populations and how observations, specimens, measurements, and other materials gathered in the field were transformed into scientific and administrative knowledge.

We are particularly interested in expeditions and scientific stations; the practices and material conditions of fieldwork; interactions between scientists, local inhabitants, guides, translators, technicians, and other participants; and the movement of knowledge and materials between the field and universities, laboratories, museums, observatories, and administrative institutions. We also welcome contributions examining the relationship between scientific research and projects of resource exploitation, agriculture, public health, territorial administration, and environmental transformation.

Geographically, the conference seeks to bring together research on Central Asia, the Caucasus, Siberia, Ukraine, and other regions of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, while examining relations between scientific centres and the different environments in which field research took place. Contributions may address the earth and environmental sciences, geography, botany and zoology, archaeology and ethnography, medicine and epidemiology, and related fields.

We particularly welcome research based on primary sources and contributions that examine continuities and transformations across 1917, as well as the international and transnational dimensions of field science.

The conference languages are English and Russian. Presentations should be approximately 20 minutes.

Proposals should include:

a paper title;

an abstract of up to 300 words;

a brief indication of the principal primary sources;

a short biographical note (maximum 100 words).

Please send proposals by 1 December 2026 to Katja Doose (katja.doose@univ-lyon2.fr) and Oybek Makhmudov (oybek81@yandex.ru).

The organizers will provide accommodation in Fribourg for three nights (13–16 June 2027). Limited travel funding is available, with priority given to doctoral and early-career researchers and participants without access to institutional travel funding. Invitation letters for visa applications can be provided.

The conference is organized as the final conference of the SNSF-funded project “Myths of Equality: The Gendered History of Science in Central Asia, 1870–1970s” (SEQUAL).

Organizing Committee:

Christine Bichsel (University of Fribourg)

Katja Doose (Université Lumière Lyon 2)

Nargiza Kenzhaeva (State Pedagogical University of Chirchik)

Oybek Makhmudov (State Pedagogical University of Chirchik)

Contact Information

Katja Doose

Université Lumière Lyon 2

katja.doose@univ-lyon2.fr 

Oybek Makhmudov 

State Pedagogical University Chirchik 

oybek81@yandex.ru

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]

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.

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! 

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.

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

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.

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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

*Second International Conference on Early Women Psychoanalysts*

 *Second International Conference on Early Women Psychoanalysts*

The International Association for Spielrein Studies is pleased to announce

the Second

International Conference on Early Women Psychoanalysts, dedicated to women

who engaged with psychoanalysis before the end of World War II. The

conference will be held online on April 10–11, 2027.

Participation is free for students and only $15 for all other attendees.

Selected contributions from the conference will be considered for inclusion

in a second edited volume associated with the Early Women Psychoanalysts

project, edited by Klara Naszkowska. For further details and the Call for

Papers please visit:

https://www.spielreinassociation.org/conference-early-women-psychoanalysts

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

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

"Environmental History Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries"

 Salzburg, Austria | 7-10 September 2027

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

More: https://eseh.org/cfp-14th-biennial-european-society-for-environmental-history-eseh-conference/