It is against this historiographical background that this two-day workshop invites scholars working on the history of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to present and discuss their original research pertaining to history of violence, reflect on methodology and discuss recent developments in the field. We are particularly interested in the cases researching violence from the perspective of commoners – peasants, artisans, merchants, urban population.

Proposed contributions may address, though are not limited to, the following themes:

1. Inter-estate violence. Physical and structural violence underpins both the hierarchical social order and the economic model of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Contributions may examine case studies on the exercise of power and acts of resistance, legal safeguards ensuring hierarchical social order, and forms of resistance to economies of domination. Several of these questions have been brought to the fore by the growing body of scholarship associated with the new people's history (historia ludowa) approach.
2. Inter-religious violence. Although Juliusz Tazbir's influential thesis of the "state without stakes" remains deeply entrenched in historiographical discourse, religious difference was a cause for violent interactions in the confessionally divided Commonwealth. We invite considerations on which religious practices sparked violent responses, and larger questions, such as whether religious difference was the main cause or a contributing factor to violent altercations.
3. Inter-ethnic violence. As the widespread trope of the multicultural Commonwealth attests, Poland-Lithuania was home to a plurality of religious and ethnic communities. While attributing violence specifically to ethnic, as distinct from religious or occupational, affiliations presents methodological challenges, ethnicity nonetheless played a demonstrable role in both interpersonal disputes and large-scale collective conflicts.
4. Gendered violence. Gender roles regulated and shaped the experience of violence, therefore gender is not only a useful, but a rather inextricable category for historical research. We encourage submissions that exemplify the subversion of gender role imposed limitations, discourses that shaped perception of gender, gendered bodily practices, and gendered legal violence.
5. Violent discourses. Since the publication of David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence, scholarly attention has turned to the ways in which discourses concerning ethnic and religious minorities directly shaped the justification and perpetration of violence. Discourses on ruthless peasants and disorderly women were used to de-/legitimize claims on the prevalent social order.
6. Historiographical turns and the study of violence. Recent methodological interests in the humanities — including the spatial turn, somatic turn, and the study of borders and mobility — open new and productive vistas for research on the history of violence.

Framework:

• We invite proposals for individual papers (abstract up to 300 words, author's name and surname, affiliation, and a short CV up to 200 words). Please submit your proposals to vilnius.violence.workshop@gmail.com
• The submission deadline is on Friday, 17 July. Decisions will be communicated on Monday, 3 August. The workshop will take place in Vilnius, 12-13 November 2026.
• The German Historical Institute Warsaw and Research Centre Ukraine – Max Weber Foundation will cover accommodation costs. Travel expenses may be covered upon request, prioritizing early-career scholars.
• The workshop is organized by the Vilnius Branch of the German Historical Institute Warsaw and will take place at Vilnius University Faculty of History.

Contact: vilnius.violence.workshop@gmail.com 

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Warschau

Titles and abstracts submission deadline: June 25, 2026

Call for papers for a special issue to be released in 2028

Coeditor: Jawad DAHEUR (CNRS-EHESS, CERCEC)

Long conceptualised within the stable framework of nation-states, interactions between societies and their environments take on a renewed significance when examined in spaces marked by unstable territorial frameworks, multiple authorities and changing political regimes. Eastern Europe—understood here in a broad yet concrete sense, stretching from the eastern Baltic region and Polish periphery to the Black Sea, and including present-day Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova—offers a particularly rich field of study in this respect. Over the long term, it has been characterised by highly mobile borders, overlapping and competing claims to sovereignty, and diverse forms of governing territories and populations.

Since the sixteenth century, this region has been shaped by the interaction of political formations, each with its own distinct logic. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an elective and composite monarchy, coexisted with the expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which eventually became an empire, while the northern shores of the Black Sea remained under Ottoman influence through flexible provincial structure and vassal entities such as the Crimean Khanate. These configurations were further complicated by the integration of certain territories into more western political entities, such as the Habsburg Monarchy in Galicia from the late eighteenth century, or the longstanding German presence on the Baltic shores.

These dynamics gave rise to differentiated and often competing forms of governance. Borders functioned as multifaceted arrangements—military, fiscal, legal and social—that structured access to resources, regulated mobility and created territorial hierarchies. The borderlands of the Pontic steppe, shaped by Crimean Tatar incursions and Cossack mobility, exemplify this enduring porosity, while other areas were subject to attempts at stricter territorial control through military or administrative means. River basins—the Dnieper, Dniester, Dvina and Neman—structured spaces of circulation that extended beyond political boundaries. External borders were complemented by numerous internal ones: differentiated legal statuses, specific fiscal regimes, internal customs boundaries and systems of mobility control. The Pale of Settlement imposed on the Jewish population of the Russian Empire from the late eighteenth century onwards, the privileges granted to Cossack communities, and special legal regimes applied to colonists in the southern steppes all illustrate a complex spatialisation of statuses and mobility.

Such configurations make Eastern Europe a particularly fertile ground for a mixed approach drawing at once on the history of sovereignties and on environmental history. They invite us to move beyond national frameworks by highlighting the mismatch between political borders and ecological, social and cultural dynamics. Environments—forests, wetlands, agricultural land and steppe regions—developed according to their varied biophysical logic cutting across institutional discontinuities. At the same time, successive shifts in sovereignty brought about sometimes rapid transformations in legal frameworks, property modes and modes of resource exploitation. The partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late eighteenth century, Russian expansion towards the Black Sea, and the political and territorial changes of the twentieth century all exemplify these processes. The key issue, therefore, is not simply to measure the impact of political power on environment, but to analyse the gaps, frictions and adjustments between state projects and ecological dynamics.

The history of this region can be understood as a series of reconfigurations in which relationships between territory, resources and authority are constantly reshaped. The nineteenth century saw an intensification of state intervention in the environment: colonisation of the steppe, agricultural expansion, agrarian reforms, forest regulation and hydraulic engineering. The development of urban and port centres such as Odessa, Riga, Königsberg and Warsaw reflects the growing integration of these spaces into regional and international economic circuits. These processes transcended political borders without rendering them irrelevant, while each change in sovereignty redefined legal frameworks and modes of natural resource exploitation without fully homogenising these practices.

The twentieth century marked a major turning point. The collapse of empires and their subsequent integration into the Soviet sphere profoundly transformed the relationship between power and environment. Centralised planning—collectivisation, industrialisation and large-scale infrastructure projects—reflected an ambition to master natural environment, even as these efforts ran into material constraints. Post-Soviet developments have prolonged these tensions, combining the redrawing of borders, territorial conflicts and transformations in environmental governance within contexts shaped both by the legacies of the twentieth century and by uneven integration into broader international frameworks.

Thematic Axes

Proposals must address environmental history, borders and sovereignties in Eastern Europe across a time span from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. They should embed environmental analysis within explicit reflection on political, legal and territorial discontinuities, demonstrating how these have shaped relationships between societies and environments. Particular attention will be given to contributions that highlight the plurality of governing frameworks, focus on spaces situated across political borders, or examine territories that have undergone changes in sovereignty. Preference will also be given to contributions based on diverse sources drawing on archives from several states or written in different regional languages—particularly German, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Romanian or Ottoman Turkish—in order to better capture circulation, disjuncture and reconfiguration in spaces shaped by plural sovereignties.

Contributions may address one or more of the following themes, without this list being exhaustive, and may also develop alternative lines of inquiry at the authors’ initiative.

1. Shifting Borders and Environmental Dynamics

This axis welcomes studies of environmental dynamics that traverse, bypass or redefine borders. Contributions may focus on river basins, wetlands or steppe regions, analysing how political discontinuities—territorial redrawing, shifting borders or overlapping jurisdictions—shape (or fail to shape) environmental processes, including natural disasters (climatic hazards, erosion, floods, forest fires) and their management. Particular attention may be paid to the differentiated effects of changing sovereignties, to mismatches between political and ecological temporalities, and to forms of continuity or rupture produced by territorial reconfigurations.

2. Sovereignty and Governance of the Environment

This thematic axis explores concrete ways in which competing powers—empires or nation-states, para-state entities —seek to appropriate, regulate and transform environments through colonisation policies, forest regulation, water management, resource taxation or economic planning, land reforms, ‘modernisation’ development programmes. Contributions may examine the instruments of governance (legal, fiscal, technical and scientific) deployed in contexts of overlapping or successive sovereignties. Particular attention will be paid to frictions between governing projects and local practices, especially in borderlands or newly integrated territories.

3. Internal Borders, Legal Hierarchies and Access to Resources

This thematic axis focuses on forms of internal fragmentation of sovereignty (differentiated statuses, exceptional legal regimes, administrative or fiscal boundaries) and their interactions with the environment. Contributions may analyse how these mechanisms structure access to resources, dynamics of exploitation and mobility, accounting for diverse actors—peasant communities, local elites, military or paramilitary groups, populations subject to specific legal statuses, colonists and migrants, state officials—as well as their practices and modes of engagement with the environment. Attention may also be paid to processes of adaptation, circumvention or resistance, and to the socio-environmental inequalities these arrangements produce.

4. Cross-Border Circulation and Socio-Environmental Reconfiguration

This axis addresses the circulation of resources, people, knowledge and techniques across politically fragmented spaces. Contributions may analyse how borders can restructure flows rather than simply blocking them, and how such circulation is shaped by environmental dynamics that constrain, direct or transform them. Topics may include exchange networks, infrastructure (ports, waterways, rail and road systems), and chains of interdependence linking various environments at many levels. Particular attention may be paid to reconfigurations associated with moments of changing sovereignty, and to the reciprocal adjustments between infrastructure, circulation and their environment.

By bringing together the history of borders, history of sovereignties and environmental history, this issue aims to contribute to a renewed understanding of Eastern Europe as a space of recurrent but unevenly paced recompositions, where environments and forms of power are embedded in relations of interdependence and mutual transformation over the long term. Contributions should explicitly demonstrate how the analysis of borders—understood as lines, zones or territorial arrangements—and sovereignties—in their plurality and reconfigurations—provides a key entry point for understanding these dynamics.

Titles and abstracts submission deadline: June 25, 2026

Short project abstracts (500 words maximum) should be sent to chreecc[at]ehess.fr

Please include name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address in all correspondence.

Authors of selected proposals will be notified by July 15, 2026.

Languages: French, English

Manuscripts submission deadline: March 1, 2027

Maximum article length: up to approximately 70,000 characters (space characters and notes included)

Evaluation: In accordance with the policies of Cahiers d’histoire russe, est-européenne, caucasienne et centrasiatique, the accepted articles will be submitted for double-blind peer review by two external referees.

Publication date: 1st half of 2028

Coeditor: Jawad Daheur

For additional information, please contact: jawad.daheur[at]ehess.fr

Zur Ausschreibung des MWN Osteuropas 

Filmic engagements with the Holocaust are shaped by a foundational paradox that emerged already during the genocide itself: while photographs and films were produced to document, administer, or stage aspects of persecution and mass murder, extensive efforts were undertaken simultaneously to conceal crimes, erase traces, and deny responsibility. From the beginning, Holocaust memory is thus marked by a tension between visual evidence and systematic obscuring – a tension that continues to structure cinematic representation, narration, and reception. This conference invites contributions that examine how films from and about the Holocaust  negotiate practices of covering and uncovering across different historical stages. Perpetrators’ claims of not having known or seen, survivors’ silence and suppression of traumatic memories, and later pedagogical debates about the use of explicit images all point to the persistence of visual and narrative limits. Films may expose atrocity while simultaneously deflecting attention, contain violence through narrative framing, or offer indirect forms of address that enable both confrontation and distance. The conference situates these dynamics within broader societal and national memory cultures. In Germany and Austria, Holocaust cinema operates within societies historically implicated in perpetration, shaped by ongoing processes of guilt negotiation, responsibility, and defensive abstraction. In Eastern European countries that were occupied during the Second World War, cinematic representations engage with histories of invasion, mass violence, and shifting regimes of power, while also confronting complex and often contested questions of collaboration, complicity, bystanderhood, antisemitism, and national self-understanding. In both contexts, repressed, fragmented, or politically instrumentalized family histories contribute to what is today described as postmemory, leaving discernible traces in cinematic form and modes of address. At the same time, new technological developments – particularly the emergence of AI-generated and AI-enhanced historical images – raise pressing questions about authenticity, evidentiary status, and the ethics of visualization, further complicating the dynamics of covering and uncovering in Holocaust cinema. We welcome papers that analyze how films reflect, reproduce, or challenge these dynamics, with particular attention to documentary and archival cinema, perpetrator and survivor imagery, pedagogical uses of film, and the afterlives of Holocaust images in changing exhibition and media contexts. The conference welcomes contributions from the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies (including film studies, media studies, history, and related disciplines). Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged.

Please submit an abstract in English of approximately 200 words (including a short biographical note) by 30 July 2026 to: 

Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska: sekretariat@dhi.waw.pl
Olga Wesołowska: olga.wesolowska@filologia.uni.lodz.pl 
Fabian Schmidt: fabian.schmidt@filmuniversitaet.de
Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann: tobias.ebbrecht-hartmann@mail.huji.ac.il

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Warschau

Zielgruppe: Masterstudierende | Doktoranden | Postdoc
Datum: 22/06/2026 - 26/06/2026
Bewerbungsfrist: 04/05/2026
Ort: Moulin d'Andé (Normandie, Frankreich)

DEUTSCH-FRANZÖSISCHER WORKSHOP

Die Beherrschung wissenschaftlichen Schreibens, sei es bei einem Forschungsprojekt, der Doktorarbeit oder einem Artikel, erfordert spezifische Fähigkeiten in der schriftlichen Formulierung und Kommunikation. Insgesamt verfolgt der Workshop das Ziel, individuelle Schreibstrategien zu entwickeln, mittels derer die Schreibphase als eine konstruktive und stimulierende Erfahrung erlebt werden kann und die das Vertrauen in die eigenen Fähigkeiten zur Fertigstellung des Manuskripts stärken.

Schwerpunkte

• Überblick und Strukturierung von Ideen und Material
• Entwicklung und Stärkung des roten Fadens im Manuskript
• Überwindung der „Angst vor dem weißen Blatt“
• Identifizierung von Unterschieden zwischen dem deutschen und französischen Wissenschaftsdiskurs

Ablauf

Der fünftägige Workshop wird von zwei deutsch-französischen Expert:innen geleitet. Den Nachwuchsforschenden werden Schreibtechniken vermittelt, um den Schreibprozess effizienter zu gestalten, die unterschiedlichen Phasen (und ihre Gefahren) zu identifizieren und Blockaden zu überwinden. Die Schreibwerkstatt bietet zudem Gelegenheit für einen Austausch über die Besonderheiten des deutschen und französischen Wissenschaftsdiskurs und die Herausforderungen des wissenschaftlichen Schreibens in einem binationalen Kontext.

Teilnahmebedingungen

• Für den gesamten Workshop wird eine Teilnahmegebühr in Höhe von 50 € erhoben.
• Die Arbeitssprachen sind Französisch und Deutsch. Die zumindest passive Beherrschung beider Sprachen (mind. B1-Niveau) wird vorausgesetzt.  
• Die Bewerbenden verpflichten sich, an der gesamten Veranstaltung teilzunehmen. Sie erhalten eine Bescheinigung, mit der sie den Workshop gegebenenfalls als Leistungsnachweis an ihrer Universität anerkennen lassen können.
• Voraussetzung für Nachwuchsforschende, die an dieser Veranstaltung teilnehmen möchten, ist die vorherige Registrierung (bzw. Rückmeldung) auf der Seite des CIERA für das laufende akademische Jahr.
• Interessierte können sich auf der Seite des CIERA anmelden. Die in einer PDF-Datei hochzuladenden Bewerbungsunterlagen enthalten einen akademischen Lebenslauf und ein Motivationsschreiben (jeweils 1 Seite max.).

Reisekosten

Die Fahrtkosten können nach Vorlage der Fahrkarten in Höhe von maximal 110 € für aus Frankreich Anreisende und 140 € für Teilnehmende aus dem Ausland übernommen werden.
Das CIERA übernimmt die gesamten Kosten für die Unterbringung und Verpflegung im Moulin d’Andé (Normandie).

Kontakt

Viktoria Lühr
viktoria.luhr@sorbonne-universite.fr

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Paris

Das DHI Rom ist eine Einrichtung der in Bonn ansässigen Max Weber Stiftung. Es widmet sich der epochenübergreifenden, interdisziplinären Erforschung der italienischen und deutschen Geschichte und Musikgeschichte in ihren europäischen und globalen Bezügen vom Mittelalter bis heute. Dabei schöpft es aus den einzigartigen Ressourcen, die Italien und insbesondere Rom als Wissenschaftsstandort bieten. Im Mittelpunkt stehen politische, wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Aspekte sowie die Vermittlung zwischen beiden Wissenschaftskulturen.

Die Zahl der Teilnehmer/-innen ist begrenzt. Erwartet wird die Übernahme eines Referates, dessen Thema bei Zusagebescheid vom DHI vorgeschlagen wird. Das Deutsche Historische Institut übernimmt die Kosten der Unterbringung in einem Doppelzimmer und gibt einen pauschalen Unkostenbeitrag von 150 €.

Weitere Informationen zu den einzureichenden Bewerbungsunterlagen können Punkt IV der Stipendienordnung entnommen werden.

Bewerbungen werden bis zum 10. Mai 2026 ausschließlich über das Bewerbungsportal entgegengenommen.

Bitte geben Sie auch an, für welche Epoche Sie sich besonders interessieren. Die Bewerber/-innen erhalten im Juni Bescheid.

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Rom

Call for Papers
The 1950s are often remembered as a decade of recovery, economic growth, and political stability, particularly from Western perspectives. Yet, this image of a war-weary globe fails to account for the pervasive and diverse forms of violence that continued to shape everyday life and political transformation during that decade worldwide.

This conference aims to reassess the so-called postwar years. It reconceptualizes the 1950s as a deeply violent decade, marked not by the absence of conflict, but rather by its reconfiguration on all levels. The decade witnessed some of the most destructive wars of the twentieth century, from the Korean War to anti-colonial struggles in Algeria, Cyprus, Indochina, and Kenya, among other places. Authoritarian regimes in Asia, Latin America, and the Soviet Union enforced ideological conformity through imprisonment, censorship, and political repression, while surveillance, ideological conflict, state and anti-state terror, and subtler forms of violence also pervaded Western Europe. Meanwhile, racial order in the United States, South Africa, and other settler societies, was sustained by repression, police brutality, and lynching.

Beyond the state level, societies and the private domain were sites of intense brutality. For instance, a surge in crime syndicates and transnational networks perpetuated racketeering, gang violence, drug smuggling, and human trafficking. Meanwhile, the domestic sphere, imagined by Western middle-classes as a sanctuary of comfort and harmony, was shaken by gendered and generational conflict and by the challenges associated with  the return to everyday life after widespread exposure to wartime violence. Everywhere, the 1950s were shaped by anticipatory violence in the form of the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation 

The conference explores the manifold societal, political, and everyday manifestations of violence in the twilight phase of the shift from war-driven societies to seemingly demobilized ones. The conference aims to challenge the narrative of the 1950s as a peaceful interlude between World War II and the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. By employing violence as a central analytical lens and by tracing its persistent presence across and within multiple world regions and on different micro- and macro-analytical layers, the conference will assess reciprocal patterns and transfers, compare and link local coercion to global power structures, and underscore how Cold War violence operated unevenly across global hierarchies. On the whole, the 1950s marked a formative moment in the evolution of modern violence—one that normalized counterinsurgency, expanded state surveillance, and globalized coercive practices.

Perpetual conflict blurred the boundaries between wartime and peacetime, embedding violence into systems of governance and everyday experience. Understanding violence in the global 1950s can help us understand how the “postwar” order was constructed through force, fear, and power imbalances, with consequences that continue to shape the contemporary world today.

The conference will take place from February 25–26, 2027, at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. In advance of the conference, participants will share papers (max. 4,500 words), which will be discussed among the group and with invited discussants. We welcome contributions that look at violence in the 1950s from different regional and disciplinary angles. We invite submissions from the fields of political, social, and cultural history; likewise, we are eager to engage with research from other disciplines, including historical anthropology, the history of violence, and culture, film, gender, and literary studies. All papers should have a decisive historical focus. The range of potential topics includes, but is not limited to: 

• Violence in post-fascist and war-weary societies, regimes of military occupation
• Transition and circulation of fascist/imperialist practices and practitioners of violence into the immediate postwar years. 
• Early Cold War rearmament policies and debates
• Colonial and anti-colonial violence: colonial repression, anti-colonial struggle, and decolonization
• Justification for violence and the language of security, modernization, anti-communism, and anti-fascism
• Terrorism, guerilla warfare, civil warfare, and revolutionary violence
• Popular representations and mass mediatization of violence
• Violence beyond the state-level: crime, drugs, and human trafficking
• Gendered, racialized, and sexual violence
• Domestic violence 
• Experience of violence and perpetrators’ perspectives: guilt, PTSD, and social reintegration in the 1950s

Please submit a short CV (max. 150 words) and an abstract (max. 350 words) in English through  our online application portal by June 12, 2026. 

Applicants will be notified by June 30, 2026. 

Accommodations will be arranged and paid for by the conference organizers. Participants will make their own travel arrangements; funding subsidies for travel are available upon request (for one presenter per paper) for selected scholars, especially those who might not otherwise be able to attend the workshop, including junior scholars and scholars from universities with limited resources. For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Andreas Greiner. For questions about the submission platform or logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter.

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Washington

Diversity and Marginality in the Black Sea Region

Dates: July 12–19, 2026.
Venue: Labour Institute, Zimbrului 10 Street, Chișinău, Moldova.
Application deadline: April 1, 2026.

Organizers:
Center for the Interethnic Relations Research in Eastern Europe, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Center for Governance and Culture in Europe, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, 
Research Centre Ukraine / Max Weber Foundation, Lviv, Ukraine
National Historical and Memorial Reserve Babyn Yar, Ukraine

Program Description:
The Black Sea region constitutes a dynamic space shaped by interconnected societal, economic, cultural, and political transformations. Rather than being geographically self-evident, the region has been historically constructed and repeatedly reimagined by policymakers, scholars, and local communities. The region has been conceptualised in varying ways: in some interpretations, it refers only to the immediate coastal areas; in others, to a broader geopolitical and cultural formation encompassing the entire Black Sea basin. The complexity of description encourages researchers to seek approaches to examining regional communities. 

The summer school invites postgraduate students, early-career scholars, and practitioners to engage with the analytical frameworks of diversity and marginality as tools for interpreting and rethinking the region. The program focuses on the transformations experienced by the region’s communities from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, ranging from political transitions between empires and nation-states to profound demographic and social changes. Bringing together leading experts on the Black Sea region, the summer school introduces participants to the cutting-edge scholarly perspectives and approaches to studying the region.

The summer school addresses diversity and marginality not as peripheral or isolated phenomena, but as a critical lens for examining broader societal transformations. Our speakers aim to investigate the lived experiences of various communities, contextualising their actions, interactions, and strategies without resorting to binary or reductive narratives. By focusing on how individuals and groups navigated societal structures through resistance, cooperation, cooptation, and adaptation, the program aims to provide tools and methods for a comprehensive analysis of these processes informed by perspectives from history, cultural studies, and social sciences.

The core course of the summer school examines the diversity of the region – from the Ukrainian lands to the Caucasus – through a transimperial approach grounded in social history. Particular attention will be devoted to imperiality and to the discursive frameworks through which metropolitan centres sought to define, categorise, and govern their peripheries. Along the borderlands of imperial spatial orders, communities and individuals articulated complex, layered, and situational identities which both engaged with and exceeded imperial classifications.

The guest lecture module will focus on questions of marginality, including marginalised social groups, cultures, and ideas. It will examine how imperial and national imaginaries attempted to reshape and claim space by symbolically and materially appropriating land and water, though many of these projects remained unrealised. Amid the region’s pronounced social, national, and religious diversity, marginality often emerged not as a locally embraced identity, but as a designation imposed by external actors and political regimes.

The summer school aims to provide participants with a comprehensive educational experience, fostering networking opportunities and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration. The format combines lectures, research seminars, discussions, study visits, and study tours. 

Among lecturers and invited speakers of the summer school: Masha Cerovic, EHESS / CERCEC, France; Constantin Ardeleanu, New Europe College, Romania; Mišo Kapetanović, Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria; Ioulia Shukan, EHESS / CERCEC, France; Iryna Klymenko, Research Centre Ukraine / Max Weber Foundation, Ukraine.

Requirements for participants:
The summer school is open to postgraduate students, early career scholars, and practitioners. The working language is English. The level of English proficiency should be sufficient to read academic literature, follow lectures, actively participate in discussions, and present your own projects.

Application should include the following documents:

• Academic CV (max. 3 pages)
• Description of a research, educational or cultural project related to the Black Sea region’s countries, topics of marginality and diversity (max. 500 words)
• Motivation letter (max. 500 words)

Please send your application as a single PDF file to: ethnickh(at)gmail.com by April 1, 2026. Please note that all application documents must be in English. 

Participant costs:
Participation in the summer school is free of charge. The organisers will provide accommodation, lunches, and refreshments, and will offer travel grants to selected participants.

Contact information:
ethnickh(at)gmail.com

Research Centre Ukraine on Facebook

Organisation: Florent Brayard, Groupe Histoire et historiographie de la Shoah, Centre de recherches historiques (EHESS-CNRS) ; Jürgen Finger, Deutsches Historisches Insitut Paris ; Julie Maeck, Mémorial de la Shoah ; Agnieszka Wierzcholska, Centre d’’histoire de Sciences Po. 

Der renommierte Holocaust-Historiker Raul Hilberg wurde vor genau einem Jahrhundert geboren. Dieses Jubiläum bietet die Gelegenheit, das Werk Hilbergs zu diskutieren, der zweifellos eine der einflussreichsten Figuren der Geschichtsschreibung zur Verfolgung und Vernichtung der europäischen Juden durch das NS-Regime ist.

Sein bahnbrechendes Werk Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden (1961) war lange Zeit die einzige systematische und detaillierte Darstellung der Struktur dieses Völkermords und der NS-Vernichtungspolitik. Zwei Jahrzehnte später erst wurde es in überarbeiteter und erweiterter Fassung ins Französische und Deutsche übersetzt. Es ist heute in mehreren Sprachen (Italienisch, Spanisch, Polnisch, Hebräisch) erhältlich. Seine Bedeutung für das Verständnis der Geschichte des Holocaust sowohl in der breiten Öffentlichkeit als auch in der akademischen Welt ist nicht zu unterschätzen. Dies gilt auch für Hilbergs spätere, stärker thematisch fokussierte Veröffentlichungen, insbesondere für Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders (1992).

Ziel des Symposiums ist es, Raul Hilbergs’ berufliche Laufbahn und sein Werk aus einer Vielzahl von Blickwinkeln neu zu beleuchten und dessen Einfluss auf die aktuelle und zukünftige Forschung zum Holocaust und, allgemeiner, zu Völkermorden zu bewerten. Wir haben drei Hauptinteressensgebiete identifiziert: Hilbergs Leben und Karriere, die Produktion von Wissen über den Holocaust in seinem bahnbrechenden Werk The Destruction of the European Jews und in späteren Studien sowie sein Einfluss auf die Holocaust-Forschung, aber auch die gelegentliche mangelnde Anerkennung seiner Arbeit.

Bewerbungsfrist: 15. April 2026

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Paris

Marion Averbeck-Dotter and Jaroslav Šebek

Fischbachau, 12^th–16^th November 2026

Migration as a global and trans-temporal historical phenomenon has already been extensively researched with regard to the 20^th century. Even in this age of increasing secularisation, religious affiliation is still considered a key factor in long-term mobility. It could lead to the restriction of fundamental rights and even to life-threatening persecution of people in their homelands. Religion was therefore one of the reasons for flight and expulsion, but it also played a role during and after the migration process itself. Religious actors (dignitaries, organizations, interest groups, etc.) could be part of this process, influence it or be subjected to forced exile themselves. In East-Central and South-Eastern Europe in particular, religious identities could also be strongly intertwined with national or ideological attitudes, which could contribute to the formation of diaspora groups in host countries around the world.

The aim of the Collegium Carolinum’s annual conference 2026 is to shed light on the role of religious actors and the significance of religious affiliation on migration movements from Eastern Europe from the 1930s to the 1960s. ‘Religion’ refers to the three major religious communities in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe: Christianity (Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy), Judaism and Islam. The central question of the conference is how religious actors influenced migration regimes from Eastern Europe from the interwar period to the Cold War, and developed their own understanding and strategies for these processes. At the same time, we want to show the agency of migrating believers and dignitaries: How did individuals and newly formed diaspora groups implement their ideas of religion and, related to this, of politics and society in their new home countries?

Three aspects can be relevant:

- Large refugee movements gave rise to humanitarian and charitable initiatives. Religious aid organisations took on their traditionally important role in providing care and support, from reception in refugee camps to the issuance of visas to host countries worldwide or repatriation to the former home regions. Questions can be asked about how these organisations cooperated with each other or with state actors, how they classified and assessed migrants, and what kind of assistance (material vs. spiritual) they offered. At the same time, we are interested in how those in need interacted with confessional organisations, e.g. by appealing to religious solidarity to improve their situation.

- Secondly, we encourage contributions on how exiles from East-Central and South-Eastern Europe were used by religious actors (such as the Holy See) in political, diplomatic and societal processes during and after their migration. They received the status of informants, translators, or experts; played an important role in anti-totalitarian propaganda or international organisations; and could become part of charitable, pastoral, or symbolic political support structures for fellow believers in Eastern Europe. At the same time, ideological and national radicalism in exile groups could meet with criticism within their own religious communities.

- Finally, we ask how confessional groups from Eastern Europe in exile and diaspora helped to shape discourses on religion, migration, and Eastern Europe. They founded associations and institutions with a religious focus; developed theological, historical, or political science theories based on their experiences; and actively influenced the social and religious life of their new homelands.

Contributions that take a comparative approach or address areas of conflict and cooperation between members, organisations, and networks of different denominations are very welcome.

The conference is organized by the Collegium Carolinum in cooperation with the German Historic Institute Rome (Max Weber-Foundation Project Group “The Global Pontificate of Pius XII”) and the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Science (Prague). It will take place in Fischbachau in the Bavarian Alps from 12^th – 15^th November 2026. The conference languages are German and English. Subject to available funds, the organizers will cover the travel and accommodation costs of all participants. Papers should last approx. 20 minutes, followed by a discussion of equal length. Scholars of all career stages are invited to submit paper proposals by 17^th April 2026 to Dr. Marion Averbeck-Dotter (marion.dotter(at)collegium-carolinum.de) and Dr. Jaroslav Šebek, Ph.D. (sebek(at)hiu.cas.cz). These should be in English and not exceed 3.000 characters in length (incl. spaces). Please also submit a short CV.

A publication in English is planned in the series “Bad Wiesseer Tagungen des Collegium Carolinum”.

Call for Papers (PDF)

The Asynchronous Histories Summer School aims to explore regions and moments in history marked by the coexistence of asynchronous sociopolitical tendencies and processes. These conditions often reveal paradoxical outcomes when seemingly well-established actors and mechanisms are put into practice. The absence—or inefficiency—of "The Great Synchronizer," whether imperial order, centralized state apparatus, or the power of capital, has, in various periods and regions, created fertile grounds for blending the old and the new in unequal and unexpected ways.

Rather than viewing this coexistence of asynchronicities as a static phenomenon, we understand it as a dynamic and intricate process. In such situations, old forms may act as tools paving the way for new developments, while new forms may consolidate old arrangements, laws, and privileges. This interplay also triggers epistemological challenges, as research tools developed in global centres often fail to yield productive results when applied to these complex settings. This is why it is both challenging and indispensable to abandon normative definitions of phenomena and states of affairs in favour of listening to local actors, whose diversity ultimately calls into question apparently universal models and descriptions of reality—models that, in practice, are deeply rooted in Western centres.

In adopting such a perspective, we draw inspiration from several contemporary intellectual currents that seek to develop thinking in this direction. First, Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of multiple temporalities enables us to discern the non-linear character of time in human societies. Second, postcolonial and subaltern narratives continually challenge Western epistemic frameworks that remain incongruent with large parts of the world beyond capitalist centers. Third, alternative conceptions of modernity pave the way for rethinking the modern project as a plural rather than a singular phenomenon.

By understanding asynchronicity in such ways, we aim to encourage a rethinking of the past through this powerful umbrella tool. We invite early-career scholars from all areas of the humanities and social sciences to join us in a shared intellectual exploration.

Exemplary areas of inquiry include:

1. Western ideologies in non-Western settings. 
2. Mixed temporalities and their synchronization. 
3. Non-linear conceptions of progress. 
4. Alt-modernities. 
5. Two economic systems in one setting. 
6. Transfers as resistance; transfers as domination. 
7. Unrealized potentials, repressed imaginaries, and projects halted midway.

Confirmed Lecturers 
Among the distinguished lecturers for this edition are:

- Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo) 
- Franz Fillafer (Austrian Academy of Sciences) 
- Augusta Dimou (University of Leipzig) 
- Banu Turnaoglu (Sabancı University / University of Cambridge) 
- Jani Marjanen (University of Helsinki) 
- Tomasz Zarycki (University of Warsaw)

Additional invited lecturers might be announced at a later stage.

Report (in Polish) and photos from the first edition: 
https://wsnsir.uw.edu.pl/asynchronous-histories-summer-school/

Organizing Institutions 
Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw 
The German Historical Institute, Warsaw 
The Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Political Thought 
in partnership with 
Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences 
The History of Concepts Group

Organizing Comittee 
Anna Gulińska, Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Jan Krakowian, Piotr Kuligowski

Eligibility and Application 
We welcome submissions from PhD students. Advanced MA students and early career postdocs (up to two years post-defence) are also encouraged to apply.

How to Apply 
Please submit the following materials by May 31, 2026: 
- A short CV (maximum two pages). 
- A concise description of your research interests (up to 1,000 words). 
Send your application to ahss.warsaw[at]gmail.com

Participation Fee 
The participation fee is 150 EUR or 650 PLN. In justified cases, this fee may be reduced

Kontakt

ahss.warsaw[at]gmail.com

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Warschau

• Borders experienced and imagined
• Materiality of borders and environment
• Multiple types of borders and modes of bordering
• Movement and bodily experiences
• Social relations
• Welfare
• Temporalities
• Urban/rural perspectives
• Property issues
• History and methodology of border studies applied to wartime contexts

Applications should be sent to conferences(at)lvivcenter.org by April 20, 2026, with the subject line “Experiencing the Borders.” Notifications on acceptance will be sent by May 5, 2026. We expect to have draft papers or notes submitted to discussants by September 7, 2026.

Co-organisers:
Center for Urban History, Lviv
Center for Russian, Caucasian, East-European and Central-Asian studies, School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (CERCEC-EHESS - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), Paris
Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague
Research Centre Ukraine / Max Weber Foundation, Lviv

Call for Papers (PDF)

Call for Papers

The Eighth Conference on Digital Humanities and Digital History will revolve around Artificial Intelligence in the historical disciplines. Generative AI has emerged as a transformative tool in historical research, serving as a method to answer historical questions, a means to streamline historians’ workflows, or even a subject of methodological and epistemological reflection itself. Even though its roots stretch back decades, generative AI only recently passed a critical threshold, bursting into a widespread applicability just a few years ago. Since the mid-20th century, the history of AI has been marked by cycles of advancement and stagnation. These fluctuations have often stemmed from tensions between symbolic (rule-based) and statistical (data-driven) approaches – two paradigms that, though historically antagonistic, are increasingly synthesized in contemporary AI systems. Since 2017 and the emergence of transformer-based systems, generative AI, although constantly “under construction,” has become an integral part of research practices. It brings profound opportunities and challenges. New capabilities come with fragility and new layers of vulnerabilities, accessibility with opacity, and widespread adoption with ethical, legal and power-related questions.  Different tendencies, cultures, and attitudes have shaped how historians respond to artificial intelligence in their work. While many historians quietly integrate AI into their workflows, others engage in methodological development and innovation or critical reflection on its capabilities and limitations, and still others voice profound concerns, particularly about its impact on interpretative and reflective dimensions of qualitative research. 

Topics

Our conference welcomes contributions across all these areas and particularly encourages work that fundamentally re-thinks or re-invents analytical or explorative approaches and workflows using AI. We equally welcome critical reflections on how AI quietly becomes woven into established research practices (often without explicit recognition). We provide a forum to examine these questions from three perspectives:

(1) Developing methods for analyzing historical sources

While implementations of AI algorithms for accessing and analyzing historical sources – including information retrieval and extraction – have so far often relied on “off-the-shelf” models, growing concerns about privacy, environmental impact, and appropriateness for the historical field have started to prompt a shift toward specialized models for historical research. Initiatives such as “Small Models for GLAM” at Hugging Face are taking important steps in facilitating the use of responsible AI by providing small models fine-tuned on high quality and open cultural heritage datasets. In this regard we want to ask:

• Methodology: What specialized models would benefit the field, and what benchmark datasets or evaluation criteria should we develop to assess them? What ethical guidelines and best practices should govern AI method development? Where have AI methods based on current models failed in historical research? What can we learn from those failures?
• New possibilities: What new research questions become addressable through AI? What novel analytical methods emerge?
• Collaboration and participation: How can historians, cultural heritage institutions, and computer scientists work together in the design of new methods for the historical field? How do we build sustainable, community-driven AI infrastructure?

(2) Creating everyday historical research workflows with AI

The integration of AI into tools used every day by historians – tools often made available by their institutions or imposed from outside, for example, by publishing houses – raises the question of AI as a “discreet digital practice” (Muller and Clavert, 2025). The increasing widespread but undocumented use of AI in historical research affects the very methods of history and its writing without us collectively understanding its consequences. In this sense, we welcome contributions that reflect on the integration of AI, particularly generative AI, into the “everyday” methodological repertoire of historians: 

• Workflow transformation: How is AI re-shaping historical research workflows such as reading, note-taking, writing, citation management, and archival research? What new workflows are emerging, and what established practices are being displaced or altered?
• Documentation and transparency: How can we make AI usage in historical research transparent and accountable? What are the legal aspects? What documentation protocols should historians adopt? How do we balance the benefits of AI tools with concerns about bias, privacy, legal aspects, environmental impact, and epistemic responsibility?
• Education and training: How should we integrate critical AI literacy into education, ensuring that students understand not only AI’s capabilities and limitations, but also its material foundations and their histories (e.g. resource extraction, energy use, data infrastructures) and ethical implications (e.g. bias, surveillance, accountability)? What pedagogical approaches effectively build critical AI literacy?

(3) Conducting research on and about the history of AI

As historians, we can also contribute to major developments in AI. Research at the intersection of STEM and the humanities has become increasingly important since the 1970s, and historians have a specific contribution to make: providing historical perspectives, whether long-term (the human quest to simulate life in its own image, from the golem to the mechanical Turk) or short-term (the history of computer science itself). AI algorithms are deeply intertwined in complex socio-technical systems, where technology, institutions, and culture intersect. We would welcome contributions that concentrate on any aspects of the history of AI, but would encourage those who focus on the history of simulation:  How have humans attempted to create artificial intelligence or simulate human cognition across different historical periods? What continuities and ruptures exist between pre-digital automata and contemporary AI systems?

Submission Guidelines

For the two-day conference, we invite you to submit proposals by March 1, 2026, for:

1. workshops for (hands-on) presentations of projects, tools, or skills (90 minutes),
2. or individual presentations (20 minutes)

Please submit a short CV and paper abstract of no more than 500 words to brigitte.melchior(at)uni.lu by 1 March 2026. The conference will offer a dynamic, inclusive international forum. Although we favor in-person attendance of participants and presenters, facilities for hybrid participation will be provided with the aim of making the event as inclusive as possible.

Zur Ausschreibung des DHI Washington