International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) 2026, Prague

 🌍✨ We are delighted to announce that the International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) 2026 will take place in Prague, Czech Republic!

Join us in one of Europe’s most beautiful historic cities for a unique gathering of scholars, collectors, librarians, and map enthusiasts from around the world.

📢 Submission Open: ICHC 2026 Call for Papers & Panels

We are pleased to announce that submissions for papers and panel proposals are now open! 

🗓 Key Date to Note

Submission of proposals (papers & posters & panels) 14 November 2025 

ℹ️ For more info, or to submit your abstract / panel proposal, visit www.ichc2026.org

CFP: Contemporary and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Modernity

 CFP: Contemporary and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Modernity

The Department of East European History at Humboldt University (Berlin) and the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at Tel Aviv University are pleased to invite you to a series of joint online workshops.

Contemporary and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Modernity

During the past century and a half, modern Russia has experienced profound upheavals and transitions, including the Great War, two revolutions, World War II, and the collapse of the communist bloc. While twentieth century scholarship focused mainly on the dividing lines between Soviet and Russian history, many researchers have since emphasised the continuities rather than the changes in the various transition points, both at the beginning and at the end of the communist regime. Recent studies suggest, however, that different practices and undercurrents have continued across the divides and should be studied as ongoing phenomena, influenced but not cut off by the political events. Moreover, after the opening of the Soviet archives in 1990s, it became clear that the Soviet period too, should not be regarded as a monolithic timeframe. Rather, it requires close attention to the internal changes and alterations that unfolded over the seventy-five years of the Soviet regime.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has profoundly reshaped many perspectives and narratives while simultaneously restricting access to archival sources. The limits the war has imposed on unmediated research of the field include the difficulties foreign researchers experience in accessing Russian and Ukrainian archives along with forced emigration of many scholars. Taken together, these factors necessitate a rethinking of how Russian and Soviet modernity is studied, calling for an approach that promotes scholarly collaboration, deepens engagement with independent post-socialist states, and addresses the persistent challenge of restricted access to original sources.

The joint Humboldt-TAU workshop draws on the unique advantage that Germany and Israel possess in advancing and fostering the field of East European studies. Significant immigration waves from the former Soviet Union have resulted in the formation of large Russian and Ukrainian speaking diasporas in both Israel and Germany, whose linguistic, cultural, and academic resources have shaped local intellectual and cultural landscapes. The workshop aims to foster a multidisciplinary group offering diverse methodological approaches to Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history. It brings together senior and junior scholars from both institutions and remains open to researchers from other universities engaged in Russian and East European studies. It holds monthly online meetings throughout the academic year with the intent of holding an in-person annual workshop at the end of the academic year. These meetings serve as a platform for discussing works in progress and exploring novel insights and methodological approaches to the issues at hand.

Our research interests encompass diverse aspects of Russian and Soviet modernity, with particular openness to a broad range of topics. We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches and the application of innovative methods drawn from across the disciplines.

Following a successful launch during the Spring Semester of 2024-2025, we are pleased to open our schedule for research presentations on topics aligned with the interests of the group. We welcome contributions from colleagues at any stage of their careers, including PhD candidates, early-career scholars, and tenured faculty. Presenters are asked to submit a text for pre-circulation prior to the session. All meetings will take place via Zoom and will begin in December 2025.

To propose a presentation, please submit a title, a 300-word abstract, and a short bio to one of the following e-mails: IUAP@tauex.tau.ac.il OR oksana.nagornaia@hu-berlin.de

To join the group as an attendee, please fill out the following form:

https://forms.gle/LfjhnVbXMVMjasy68

Submission deadline is November 15, 2025.

We look forward to meeting you online!

The Organising Committee:

Oksana Nagornaia, HU

Irina Makhalova, HU

Vera Kaplan, TAU

Dina Moyal, TAU

CFP: Manuscript Practices and the Making of Exile Communities in the Early Modern Period

CFP: Manuscript Practices and the Making of Exile Communities in the Early Modern Period

The international conference Manuscript Practices and the Making of Exile Communities  in the Early Modern Period, organised by the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS in collaboration with the Institute of History of the CAS, will take place on 15 and 16 April 2026 at the Academic Conference Centre, Husova 4a, Prague 1.

The conference will focus on the role of manuscript culture in exile communities of diverse religious backgrounds during the early modern period, with a particular emphasis on the 1620s and 1630s. Specifically, it will examine how the written word was used to sustain, transmit, and reshape collective and individual identities amid the pressures of displacement and religious conflict. The discussion will cover the various forms of manuscript production, such as personal notebooks and records, collections of sermons, prophetic and chiliastic writings, polemical tracts and historical compilations, all situated within institutional frameworks and domestic contexts. Particular attention will be given to the act of copying, which will be considered not only as a practical means for the transmission of texts in environments with limited access to print, but also as a practice with symbolic significance and economic value. Copies could serve as a reaffirmation of tradition, a means and strategy for coping with the loss of home and faith. Furthermore, commissioning copies could function as a form of social support, providing employment and sustenance for those in exile who had lost their livelihoods. By examining these practices, the conference aims to shed light on the specific textual corpora of exile and broader issues of communication, such as memory, authorship and textual identity in forced migration situations.

We invite proposals which engage, among others, with the following themes:

The manuscript as a medium of exile experience and identity: manuscripts written under conditions of repression, displacement, and the loss of institutional frameworks; handwritten texts as an alternative to print, serving both practical and symbolic functions; the transmission and preservation of confessional identity through scribal practices.

Rewriting and copying as cultural practices: the purposes, methods, and strategies of textual reproduction; the role of manuscript collections in shaping and sustaining memory practices; rewriting and copying as forms of spiritual resilience and solidarity.

The typology of manuscript production by content: parenetic, chiliastic, prophetic, and polemical writings; sermon transcripts; chronicles and historical compilations; ego-documents and personal testimonies in manuscript form.

Exile centres and their manuscript cultures: local hubs of manuscript production; institutional and private initiatives in the formation of collections; patrons and commissioners of texts; the circulation of manuscripts within exile communities and their connections to the homeland – networks of manuscript authors, copiers, and recipients.

Between manuscript and print: the transition of manuscript texts into print – when and why it occurred; printing as an affirmation of newly negotiated identities; the interplay of manuscript and print cultures in exile; the encouragement and supervision of writing and copying practices.

Please submit a proposal consisting of an abstract (100–200 words) and a brief curriculum vitae to Tomáš Havelka (havelka@flu.cas.cz) by 30 October 2025.

This conference is a part of the research project Manuscript Practices and Textuality of Exile Communities from the Czech Lands in the 1620s and 1630s, supported by the Czech Science Foundation (reg. nr. 25-15529S).

REMINDER: CFP: STAND (Historical Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy) Early Career Research Seminars 2025-2026,

STAND (Historical Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy)

Early Career Research Seminars 2025-2026,

Call for Participants

This is an open call for participants for the STAND (Commission on Science, Technology and Diplomacy) Early Career Researchers Seminar series for 2025-2026. The commission and its members examine the broad history of science, technology and diplomacy and are looking for post-grads and early career researchers to present during next year's online seminar series.

We are looking for researchers who address the history of science, technology and medicine in their broad international contexts. Topics include but are not limited to: science diplomacy, international cooperation in fields related to science, technology and medicine, and the transnational circulation of technoscientific and medical knowledge, materials and expertise. Please see our website for more information on previous presenters, and the work we do: https://sciencediplomacyhistory.org/postgraduate-early-career-initiatives/  

The seminars will run from October 2025 to ca. May 2026 usually on the first Thursday of the month - dates tbc with organisers - and will be held on Microsoft Teams.

Seminars last one hour and usually consist of a brief presentation followed by Q&A. Possible formats include: 

A pre-circulated work-in-progress paper (journal article draft, thesis chapter, book chapter etc) of 10-20 pages, using the seminar as an opportunity to gain feedback or suggestions for improvement.

A 20-30 minute presentation on your current research, followed by Q&A, discussion and feedback.

An ‘in conversation with’ session where you are paired with someone with similar research interests, to have a discussion on a particular topic. You can also use this time to raise questions to experts or individuals working on similar topics to you.

We welcome inquiries regarding alternative seminar formats, and encourage you to get in touch if you are interested! 

Please send any expressions of interest to STAND.ECR@gmail.com, in an email which includes your name, short bio and a brief summary of your research as it pertains to the seminar. We don’t need anything further at this stage, but please indicate what format of session you would prefer. We also encourage you to email us if you have any questions, queries or would like to be included in the mailing list for the seminars if you are not already.

We’re particularly looking for someone to fill our October (Thurs Oct 9th) session - so if you have some work you want feedback on soon, please let us know!

Kind regards,

Alice and Kat

Call for conference papers Cold altitudes: knowledge, imagination, and experiences of mountain ice

 Call for conference papers

Cold altitudes: knowledge, imagination, and experiences of mountain ice

Date: 11-12.05.2026

Venue: University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Organisers: Christine Bichsel (University of Fribourg), Katja Doose (University Lyon 2)

From glaciological expeditions to snow myths, from avalanche laws to mountain poetics, ice has shaped how humans engage with high-altitude environments. This conference explores how societies have known, represented, and inhabited mountain ice—broadly understood to include glaciers, snowfields and avalanches —through empirical and conceptual lenses across the humanities and social sciences. Recent advances in the ice humanities and related fields explored the manifold relationships between humans and ice mainly focusing on examining polar and circumpolar contexts. A systematic account on mountain ice is missing in the social sciences and humanities. This conference seeks to examine human-ice relations as part of the cultural, political, ecological, spiritual and scientific dimensions of mountains. 

We invite contributions that investigate mountain ice as a medium of knowledge, cultural meaning, and social life. How have glaciers and snow been imagined in literature and art? How have they been measured, inhabited, feared, celebrated, or transformed into resources? What epistemologies, cosmologies, infrastructures, or legal regimes have crystallized around frozen heights? We particularly welcome papers that address: 

• Histories of mountain glaciology, avalanche science, and snow observation 

• Scientific, local, and indigenous knowledge practices related to mountain ice 

• The cultural imagination of glaciers, snow, and avalanches in literature, film, or visual arts 

• Ice as a legal, political, or territorial entity in mountain regions 

• Aesthetic, emotional, or sensorial engagements with mountain ice 

• Ice as archive: materiality, memory, and temporality in frozen mountainous environments 

While grounded in mountain regions, we also welcome conceptual reflections that connect mountain ice to broader discussions in environmental humanities, environmental history, historical geography, or science and technology studies.

We welcome submissions from junior and senior scholars. The format of the conference will be interactive. Conference papers will be pre-circulated, and participants’ commentaries will guide the discussions. We expect participants to submit their full draft conference papers by 01.05.2026. We aim to produce an edited volume from this conference.

Abstracts of up to 300 words, with an indication of the sources the research is based on, and a short biography (max. 100 words) should be sent by 31.10.2025 to christine.bichsel@unifr.ch AND katja.doose@univ-lyon2.fr. 

Accommodation and transport will be partially covered by the organisers, with priority given to financial support for junior scholars. 

Melanie Arndt. Chernobyl Children: A Transnational History of a Nuclear Disaster

Melanie Arndt. Chernobyl Children: A Transnational History of a Nuclear Disaster. Translated by Alastair Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. ISBN: 978-1-009-45776-7

In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, more than a million Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian children were sent abroad. Aided by the unprecedented efforts of transnational NGOs and private individuals, these children were meant to escape and recover from radiation exposure, but also from the increasing hardships of everyday life in post-Soviet society. Through this opening of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of people in over forty countries witnessed the ecological, medical, social and political consequences of the disaster for the human beings involved. This awareness transformed the accident into a global catastrophe which could happen anywhere and have widespread impact. In this brilliantly insightful work, Melanie Arndt demonstrates that the Chernobyl children were both witness to and representative of a vanishing bipolar world order and the future of life in the Anthropocene, an age in which the human impact on the planet is increasingly borderless.

Jan Piskurewicz, Sylwia Szarejko: Instytut Kultury Polskiej im. Attilia Begeya w Turynie i jego wybitni animatorzy

Jan Piskurewicz, Sylwia Szarejko: Instytut Kultury Polskiej im. Attilia Begeya w Turynie i jego wybitni animatorzy [The Attilio Begey Institute of Polish Culture in Turin and its outstanding animators]. Warszawa: Aspra 2025. ISBN 978-83-8209-344-5

Publikacja stanowi kompleksowe studium Instytutu Kultury Polskiej im Attilia Begeya w Turynie, będącego kamieniem węgielnym polsko-włoskich relacji kulturalnych. Podczas gdy wcześniejsze prace na ten temat ograniczały się do krótkich artykułów lub wzmianek, niniejsze opracowanie przyjmuje szersze podejście, nie tylko szczegółowo opisując działalność Instytutu, ale także podkreślając znaczący wkład osób, które go stworzyły, wspierały i utrzymywały. Z recenzji dr hab. prof. IFiS PAN Valentiny Lepri Praca posiada niezwykle przejrzysty układ, który został ukształtowany przez dwa czynniki: dobór rozpraw oraz chronologię działalności przedstawionej w książce instytucji. Choć praca "Instytut Kultury Polskiej im. Attilia Begeya w Turynie i jego wybitni animatorzy" składa się z ośmiu rozpraw, których Autorami są głównie Pan Profesor Piskurewicz oraz Pani Doktor Szarejko, to nie stanowi dzieła zbiorowego, a monografię koherentną i w swoim wywodzie konsekwentną, przemyślaną, poprawnie zaprojektowaną. […] Choć praca ta zgrabnie łączy rozmaite dziedziny wiedzy, np. historię nauki, historię literatury, dzieje instytucji kultury oraz socjologię, to naczelną kategorią jaką się posługuje, jest polonofilia, wprowadzona i rozwijana na tym polu przez Krystynę Jaworską. Oznacza niepowtarzalny dla kultury polskiej splot literatury i polityki, stąd dwa ciągi rozważań w książce, czasami ukrywane pod zbiorczą kategorią włoskiej polonistyki. Pozwala nie tylko uchwycić dokonania twórców Instytutu na polu krzewienia kultury polskiej we Włoszech, lecz również wykazać intelektualne, osobiste podstawy decyzji o poświęceniu swojego życia właśnie współpracy z Polakami. […] Autorzy wyszli od słusznego przekonania, iż historia instytucji jest w dużej mierze dziejami tworzących ją ludzi. Dlatego główną periodyzację funkcjonowania Instytutu, wyznaczyli biografi ami jego członków. […] W ten sposób praca "Instytut Kultury Polskiej im. Attilia Begeya w Turynie i jego wybitni animatorzy" wpisuje się w nowoczesną ego-historię. Nie uniknęli przy tym Autorzy podjęcia się tematów trudnych, jak np. faszyzm, dzięki czemu nie generowali przy tym kolejnych białych plam. Recenzowana praca jest rzadkim w humanistyce przykładem porządnej współpracy badaczy na cztery ręce. Z recenzji prof. dr hab. Mikołaja Sokołowskiego