Past Events

This seminar will explore how military leadership in the Habsburg Empire increasingly turned their attention to the legal and administrative regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the years before the First World War.

Anlässlich des 30. Jahrestages der Umsetzung des Schengen-Abkommens und des EU-Beitritts Österreichs nimmt diese Podiumsdiskussion die langfristigen und gegenwärtigen Dynamiken der europäischen Grenz- und Migrationspolitik kritisch in den Blick.

Projektpräsentation und Paneldiskussion mit Christina Hainzl (Universität für Weiterbildung Krems) und Peter Techet (Institut für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa, IDM).

Migration and transformation as topics matter deeply in the contemporary world as migration, mobility, and all forms of exchange that they cause affect not only those who migrate but societies as a whole. At RECET, scholars affiliated with the Research Group “Migration and Transformation” (funded by the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies) aim to…

Politische und mediale Narrative über Migration malen oft ein düsteres Bild, das nur wenig mit den tatsächlichen Fakten zu tun hat. Was sagt uns der Stand der Migrationsforschung über aktuelle und zukünftige Migrationstrends?

The city of Vienna was a major transit hub for refugees from state-socialist countries on their way west during the Cold War. We will explore this fascinating history from multiple angles on our walking tour through the city center.

Wien ist eine Stadt der Migration. Zuwanderung und Vielheit prägen sie. Unermüdlich setzen sich künstlerische und aktivistische Stimmen dafür ein, diese politische und gesellschaftliche Realität Wiens sichtbar zu machen. In Literatur, Liedern und Lyrics, in geplanten Denkmälern und stattfindenden Performances sowie in engagiertem Aktivismus und Kampf um…

Wie sieht das Leben der postsowjetischen Juden und Deutschen heute aus, gut 35 Jahre nach dem Ende der Sowjetunion? Welche Herausforderungen, Chancen und Lebensbedingungen prägen ihre Erfahrungen heute? Wie beeinflussen Identitätsfragen ihr Leben und ihre Interaktionen innerhalb dieser Gesellschaften?

Migrant literature and transnational literature are seemingly interchangeable concepts, with highly different political connotations. Migrant experience is heavily gendered and is shaped by other elements of one’s identity. In this panel, two writers, who approach migration and a transnationalism in their writing, and two scholars of migration and…

This roundtable discussion will provide embedded insights from and about diasporic realities in Europe, with a particular focus on the voices and challenges of migrants and the diasporic communities.

In den 1960ern und 1970ern kamen tausende Menschen aus Jugoslawien und der Türkei zum Arbeiten nach Österreich. Dieser bedeutenden Migrationsbewegung widmen wir uns aus der Sicht der Migrant:innen bei einem Rundgang durch Ottakring in Zusammenarbeit mit der Gruppe „Gehörgänge“ und begleitet durch den Zeitzeugen Ali Gedik.

Redaktionen der “klassischen” Medien – egal ob Print, TV oder Radio - bilden die Vielfalt der Einwanderungsgesellschaft nach wie vor kaum ab. Migrantische Perspektiven sind somit häufig unterrepräsentiert. Wie schaffen es die Stimmen von Migrant*innen in die Öffentlichkeit?

Im Spannungsfeld zwischen pragmatischen Erwägungen zu Fachkräftemigration etc. einerseits und den humanitären Imperativen der Flüchtlingspolitik andererseits vollzieht sich die Suche nach Möglichkeiten, Migration zu regulieren. Wie viel Regulierung ist in liberalen Gesellschaften und Demokratien aber möglich und um welchen Preis?

Carol Silverman and Mirjam Karoly will discuss how Roma, Europe's largest ethnic minority of approximately 12 million, illuminate the themes of migration, transformation, and resilience. Who are Roma and why is their history relevant today?

The development of migration processes and the related debates over migration have become key issues in contemporary social transformation. The talk will argue that we have to analyze material and discursive processes together in order to understand migratory changes and discourses on migration within the framework of social change and historical dynamics.

The economic transformation of the Republic of Ireland into a ‘Celtic tiger’ and that of Poland into a market economy are primarily associated with the 1990s. However, recent studies show that these developments already began in the 1980s, so that it is sometimes possible to speak of the “long 1980s” - even if the political changes in East-Central Europe in…

This book explores the origins and evolution of China’s institutions and communist totalitarianism in general. Contemporary China's fundamental institution is communist totalitarianism. Introducing the concept of Institutional Genes (IGs), the book examines how the IGs of Soviet Russia merged with those of the Chinese imperial system, creating a durable…

Although they may seem far apart, the social processes of upward mobility and partner selection are in fact very much intertwined. Whereas endogamy is a well-known method of safeguarding the borders of class, marrying into a family of higher social status has always been recognized as an efficient tactic of social climbing for both men and women. Drawing on…

From the very first days of their large-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian invaders have made exceptional efforts to interact with the war memorial landscape of the newly occupied territories. This landscape consists of tens of thousands of monuments, mostly in small towns and villages, commemorating the Second World War and other…

Social justice is a key term for political struggle, a core concept of labour movements and a reference point for people’s activism. This roundtable discussion invites scholars, experts, and policymakers to consider what advancing social justice means in the practical realm.

A joint event of the RECET-hosted MSCA research project WORK-AGE-JUST and the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue.

How have ordinary people been affected by, responded to, and made sense of the manifold changes in Eastern Europe over the past three decades? How have dominant narratives of transition obscured everyday experiences of this period and how have people, in turn, challenged these narratives?

This second half of a two-part workshop in Vienna and Prague will bring together junior and senior scholars working on human movement & migration and on the circulation of goods and ideas to explore the development of new transnational perspectives on the history of Central and Eastern Europe in its global context. They will link up and deepen existing…

How did Shi'a Islamist actors come to hold such grand ambitions for themselves? In this talk, Prof. Dr. Timothy Nunan draws on research in new Persian- and Arabic-language materials to show how decolonization and the Cold War shaped the trajectory of Shi'a Islamism.

As part of the activities of the project RETLAMI-SEE at the University of Banja Luka, the project consortium invites interested researchers to participate in an online training aimed at preparing early career scholars for archival research on labour and migration in Southeastern Europe.

The talk will attempt to interpret the evolution of the Polish Jewish elite, with particular emphasis on the elite circles of Warsaw, over the course of the “long 20th century”. The key point of reference for the analysis will be the changing political, cultural, and, above all, economic relations in the Polish lands and the resulting changes in the…

The aim of this seminar is to show how the concept of the civilizing mission – once used in the colonial politics of Western empires – was transferred in various ways to another geographical area, namely in East-Central Europe: both as an intellectual idea and as a tool for legitimizing political power.

This first half of a two-part CENTRAL workshop in Vienna and Prague will bring together junior and senior scholars working on human movement & migration and on the circulation of goods and ideas to explore the development of new transnational perspectives on the history of Central and Eastern Europe in its global context.

Der Vortrag untersucht die relative Bedeutung der Beziehungen des sozialistischen Ungarn zum Globalen Süden und zum Westen. Was erwarteten sich die ungarischen Eliten von diesen Beziehungen? Welche Strategien verfolgten sie? Wie nahmen sie die globale Position Ungarns wahr?

What is the potential of the new book "Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights. East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century" to change perceptions and approaches to Central, East Central and Southeast Europe? How can this book fit into the ways experts in the field think about gender and women’s history in Central,…

The editors of "Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights. East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century" will offer an introduction into the methodology of preparing the book, and, with the invited speakers, present parts of it.

Who were the communist women who designed and implemented the socialist project of women’s emancipation not only in Poland, but around the world? How did they conceptualize emancipation?

Supported by the European Business History Association-EBHA

The discursive construct of “Soviet Jewry," defined as a homogeneous unit, was shaped to a significant extent by the Soviet regime’s centralistic features, including its nationalities policies. We are interested in exploring the porous borders of Soviet (non)Jewishness, and the character and intensity of Jewish-non-Jewish encounters in the Soviet…

Der neueste Band der „Schriftenreihe der Ständigen Konferenz österreichischer und tschechischer Historiker zum gemeinsamen kulturellen Erbe“ (SKÖTH) lenkt den Blick auf Österreich und die Tschechische Republik als Einwanderungsländer und bietet einen Überblick über die Arbeitsmigration seit dem Habsburgerreich bis in die Zeit nach 1989 und dem Beitritt…

Producing clear and engaging visual communication is key to standing out as a professional scientist and effectively sharing your research process and findings. It is a skill set that is increasingly valuable in academia and industry. Roman Doroshenko's workshop covers essential tools and principles that with practice, will significantly enhance your visual…

We are thrilled to announce that starting September 2024 we will host a new doctoral network under the FWF doc.funds scheme. RECET will be welcoming 7 new PhD students who will work under the umbrella topic "Dynamics of Change and Logics of Transformation".

This workshop aims to explore the structure and effects of military patronage of the arts across all times and places. It seeks to go beyond the time-honored theme of “the artist in uniform” to ask how relationships between militaries and artists are formed and how they influence artistic styles, themes, and tastes.

This seminar will examine how governments, social actors, multilateral institutions, and NGOs worked to bridge the goals of broad regional mobility and deep social protection as free movement was implemented in the 1960s.

In order to better understand the industrialisation spurt and later the (financial) crisis and collapse of the command economies of Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) as well as the applied economic policy mix before and during their transition to market economies, including the decisive role of initial conditions, we will digitise and publish online…

In seinem Buch Wie wir uns die Zukunft zurückholen (Brandstätter Verlag, 2024) entwirft Rudi Anschober eine optimistische Vision der nahen Zukunft: Der Autor wird in diesem Vortrag die Thesen seines Buches präsentieren und diskutieren. 

Can there be “too much” activism? Will climate activists start their “long march through the institutions”? This panel brings together scholars, activists and journalists to discuss these and other issues.

In this panel we look at past and future utopias, the solutions for regeneration that they promise, the challenges that they envision and ask if the time of the grand utopia is over. Shall we reconsider the very premises of utopian thinking and find new ways to deal with the unruliness of nature? 

Vom burgenländischen Neusiedler See bis in die Hochtäler der Tiroler Alpen: Längst machen zunehmende Wetteranomalien deutlich, dass die globale Erwärmung Österreichs vielfältige Lebensräume gravierend verändert und damit auch seine Wirtschaft maßgeblich beeinflusst – von der Industrie bis zum Gastgewerbe.

Climate change and environmental degradation are problems that affect all of Europe, yet the continent seems divided over the nature of the issue and the necessary instruments to mitigate and adapt. This panel brings together experts from the social sciences, from policymaking, and from civil society, to discuss this question and its implications for the…

What role can nuclear energy play in green transformation, if any? In this roundtable discussion, the panelists analyze the paradoxes that emerged from the roll-out of nuclear energy production on the one hand, and its governance on the other.

The panel brings together scholars working on ecology and environmental activism in history, anthropology, international relations and cultural studies, from a feminist perspective. How are the labors of “green transformation(s)” gendered? And what kind of gendered political demands, tensions and cooperations might such transformations bring in a global…

It is in cities that our future can be decided. This panel joins scholars with practitioners of urban planning and climate transformation to discuss local perspectives and solutions for a global problem.

As a counter-narrative to the dominant environmental violence, this keynote draws on recent art-activist production in Bosnia and Herzegovina and discusses and analyzes the extent to which it intervenes in the socio-environmental dynamics of ethnic authoritarian governance.

The decades following the First World War were a period of political, social, and economic transformation for Central and Eastern Europe. The seminar looks at the role of foreign aid in Romania between 1918 and 1940, as it explores the interrelation between state building and non-governmental humanitarianism in the interwar period.

In this keynote, Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll will give us insights into the methodological thoughts behind her work on colonial histories through contemporary art. Her art practice involves montaging words and images within films and installations that voice alternate histories through texts and performances.

In contemporary capitalist societies the provisioning of domestic work has undergone and continues to undergo substantial transformations. These transformations include the externalization, commodification, and commercialization of socially reproductive labor. This keynote shows that practices encouraged by digitally mediated marketplaces can perpetuate the…

The workshop aims to make a significant contribution to the field of contemporary cultural history by investigating both material and immaterial cultural practices, and exploring how meanings circulate in society.

The International Union of Students - IUS - was one of the most influential student NGOs during the Cold War. This lecture offers an interpretation, reflecting the debate on the Global Cold War and the impact of decolonization, the role of the IUS and Prague (where it was based) in the transnational socialist network, and last but not least, also the history…

Flight and migration are part of the dramatic consequences of the escalation of the Russian war against Ukraine. Millions of people have been forced to leave their devastated homes in Ukraine, but hundreds of thousands have also fled their Russian homeland. This presentation will analyze rare survey data on social and political views of Russian migrants in…

Lea Ypi's new book will follow the journey of a woman from Ottoman Salonica to a life under surveillance in post-war Communist Albania. The book explores the moral and political meanings of dignity, individual and collective, in connection to questions of truth and reconciliation, historical injustice and the relationship between fact and fiction.

Understanding VW's intense focus on China requires delving into the history of its interactions with its largest global market. However, much remains unknown about the perspectives of decision-makers in Wolfsburg and Beijing regarding VW's entry into China.

The long debates between feminism and socialism about the place of class and gender in progressive politics were re-invigorated in unexpected ways by the Marxist renaissance and second wave feminism in various locations across East Central Europe.

Die Ringvorlesung widmet sich den langen Linien der Geschichte der Nachbarschaft der nordischen Völker und Nationen und Russlands zwischen Konflikt und Koexistenz. Im Laufe des Semesters präsentieren führende Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der Geschichts- und Politikwissenschaften aus Norwegen, Schweden, Finnland und Estland ihre aktuellen Forschungen zur…

Highlighting the forgotten stories of Soviet citizens who contributed to the nuts-and-bolts operations and lesser-known activities of world governance, the talk will illustrate the UN’s importance for a group of Soviet "one-worlders," who used the world body to imagine and work for a better world amidst the realities of the Cold War.

In this public Workshop RECET scholars meet VWI fellows – four keynote presentations are commented and discussed and you are welcome to join us!

In socialist Yugoslavia, there was a vast production of monuments dedicated to the antifascist People’s Liberation Struggle in the Second World War and the socialist revolution. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these monuments have been subject to various fates, from neglect and physical destruction to global fame generated by the high-modernist…

Together with Eurozine and Radio Orange, RECET is realizing its very first youth project: reaching out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and introducing them to the world of academic research.

Fabian Baumann will present his book "Dynasty Divided. A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism" published with Cornell University Press (2023).

Together with Eurozine and Radio Orange, RECET is realizing its very first youth project: reaching out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and introducing them to the world of academic research.

Together with Eurozine and Radio Orange, RECET is realizing its very first youth project: reaching out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and introducing them to the world of academic research.

Together with Eurozine and Radio Orange, RECET is realizing its very first youth project: reaching out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and introducing them to the world of academic research.

Together with Eurozine and Radio Orange, RECET is realizing its very first youth project: reaching out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and introducing them to the world of academic research.

A panel discusses "Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia" (Princeton University Press, 2023) with its authors Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper

Grenzen sind nicht nur Hindernisse für Menschen, die sie von außerhalb überwinden wollen. Sie verändern auch die Gesellschaften, die sich abzuschotten versuchen.

Öffentlicher Teil der Konferenz "Migration – Rechtspopulismus – Autoritarismus: Herausforderungen für die offene Gesellschaft".

This lecture explores how fin-de-siècle beekeepers in the Yugoslav region imagined and attempted to carry out the racial reclamation of their local honeybees. It is ultimately part of a larger labor and environmental history of the post-Ottoman Balkans, which examines how transnational capital and new national states reshaped the relationship between local…

Book Launch of "Kingdom of Barracks. Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria" with Dr. Katarzyna Nowak – hosted at the Library of Contemporary History.

An interdisciplinary conference organized by the Ukraine in European Dialogue program at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) will be held at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna on 8-10 November 2023

Together with Eurozine and Radio Orange, RECET is realizing its very first youth project: reaching out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and introducing them to the world of academic research.

Poland’s post-socialist transformation started way before the fall of communism. But how did the home of the unprecedented Solidarność movement turn into the pioneer of neoliberal shock therapy in Eastern Europe?

This keynote is part of the International Conference "600 Days of the All-Out War. Fighting for Freedom, Fighting for Democracy". The lecture is open to the public.

Kolloquium zu Ehren des Geburtstages von Heinz-Gerhard Haupt. Kooperation mit der LMU München und dem Institut für Geschichte (Universität Wien)

A panel discusses Central Europe's function as a laboratory of our current world order.

Reflections on the geographical, political and cultural borders maintained in research in area studies remain crucial for overcoming the theoretical and methodological limits of our analyses. If it is the existence of a particular area that brings us together as scholars of history, politics, society, media, literature, arts and languages where do we start…

This keynote explores the intersection of queer and Holocaust history through the example of an enforced relationship between two women, guard and a prisoner in a small satellite camp of Gross Rosen in the final months of the Second World War.

When the Von der Leyen Commission took office in December 2019, the new President, Ursula von der Leyen, pledged to put "Foresight" at the heart of her agenda for Europe. But what is Foresight, where did it come from, and how did it attain such political prominence?

Es ist zu einer verbreiteten Sichtweise geworden, dass "Stress" eine Herausforderung für unser aller Lebensführung darstellt. Wie konnte "Stress" - ein lange Zeit ausschließlich in medizinischen und psychologischen Fachkreisen verwendeter Begriff - eine solche Bedeutung erlangen? Anhand des Beispiels der sozialistischen Tschechoslowakei und der…

Three decades after the begin of China's process of opening up and reform and about a decade after China's accession to the WTO, the country's fast industrialisation process became hard to ignore. In European politics this is summarised in the acknowledgement of China as a „partner for cooperation and negotiation, an economic competitor and systemic rival".…

Double Keynote presentation in the framework of the Conference "Deindustrialization and Reindustrialization Re-Connected"

Lesung und Diskussion: In dieser Literaturlesung und -diskussion wird unser angesehener Autor*innenkreis ihre Einsichten zur Darstellung sozioökonomischer Ungleichheiten in der Literatur teilen und prüfen, wie das Schreiben als starkes Instrument genutzt werden kann, um Ungleichheiten anzufechten.

Roundtable-Diskussion

Roundtable-Diskussion:

Welche Auswirkungen hat zunehmende Ungleichheit auf den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt? Stellt sie eine Gefahr für das demokratische System dar? Was können traditionelle sozialstaatliche Ausgleichsmechanismen noch leisten? Oder ist Chancengleichheit statt Umverteilung der Schlüssel zu mehr Gerechtigkeit in der Gesellschaft?

Roundtable Discussion: The roundtable aims at engaging scholarly, literary, political, and activist perspectives in a dialogue on how questions of justice permeate their perceptions and practices of addressing the climate emergency.

Lecture: Looking at the case of China, this talk looks at how digital technologies have transformed social, economic, and political life in China.

Keynote lecture: Reviving the commons and compensating the commoner for their deprivations should form the core of a new progressive politics grounded in ecological imperatives of our times.

Roundtable discussion: How is inequality encoded in technologies, human bodies, literary canons, and economic systems? And what transformations have the concepts of equality and inequality undergone in East Central Europe and beyond over the past half century?

Third Open Forum in the Framework of the Project "Knowledgeable Youth – Vom Wissen der Jungen" – a RECET cooperation with Eurozine and Radio Orange, funded by the City of Vienna, Culture Affairs

Perestroika and transformation have to be considered as part of larger histories and re-integrated into the arguments and theories developed for late socialism and theories developed for late socialism. The Transformative Seminar is going to be a very first exploration of a new research project: a history of emotions relating to a ‘long’ Perestroika.

Welche Rolle kommt den Digital Humanities für Schutz und Sicherung von gefährdeten Kulturgütern zu? Wie funktioniert Kulturgutschutz zwischen politischer Willensbildung und praktischer Umsetzung? Inwieweit sollen sich Wissenschaftler:innen zu gesellschafts- und geopolitischen Fragen positionieren?

Lilia Tomchuk’s PhD project examines the facets of Jewish women's agency in different contexts during the Holocaust in Transnistria, where Jews and Roma from Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported by Romanian authorities in 1941 and 1942 and where local Ukrainian Jews were brought from neighbouring localities.

Second Open Forum in the Framework of the Project "Knowledgeable Youth – Vom Wissen der Jungen" – a RECET cooperation with Eurozine and Radio Orange, funded by the City of Vienna, Culture Affairs

Lecture format: on site + online.
Room: 2R-EG-07 (lecture hall of the Institute for Eastern European History).
Street address: Spitalgasse 2,  Campus of the University of Vienna, Hof 3.

Irina Scherbakowa, der Mitgründerin der Menschenrechtsorganisation Memorial (Friedensnobelpreis 2022), gelang es vor ihrer erwartbaren Verhaftung aus Russland zu fliehen.…

CENTRAL is a scientific network of five renowned Central European universities: Charles University in Prague, University of Warsaw, University of Vienna, ELTE Budapest as well as Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, which aims to promote Central Europe as a hub for academic excellence.

Following the outbreak of the Cold War, the Soviet political establishment became fascinated with visions of a universal scientific literacy to promote the progress to Communism. This task shaped the late Soviet city and, in essence, represented a response to one of the most important questions of modernity: how to use the urban environment to produce…

CENTRAL is a scientific network of five renowned Central European universities: Charles University in Prague, University of Warsaw, University of Vienna, ELTE Budapest as well as Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, which aims to promote Central Europe as a hub for academic excellence.

First Open Forum in the Framework of the Project "Knowledgeable Youth – Vom Wissen der Jungen" – a RECET cooperation with Eurozine and Radio Orange, funded by the City of Vienna, Culture Affairs

in the framework of the project "Knowledgeable Youth/Vom Wissen der Jungen" sponsored by the City of Vienna

“Paradise for the proletariat” was the awe-struck assessment of one visitor to the mines in Central Africa in the 1950s. Miners drove Jaguar cars, sailed yachts, swam in Olympic-sized swimming pools, played polo and some even owned planes. Was paradise on earth really achieved? And how was it achieved?

How do states and societies confront the legacies of war and occupation, and what do truth, guilt, and justice mean in that process? The talk examines people’s wartime choices and their aftermath in Belarus, a war-ravaged Soviet republic that was under Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

In this talk, Prof. Sluga's focus is specifically on 20th century texts that address war and peace by women thinkers categorisable as both international and ‘European’, drawing in accessible Russian-language examples.

What does it mean for Ukrainian citizens to choose to speak Ukrainian or Russian? This talk will focus on the impact of the ongoing war on language, and the role of language in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Churches are often overlooked in the studies of memory. The study faces these imbalances and approaches churches as memory actors which are intensively engaged in the formation of memory culture that significantly contributes to re-shaping and re-negotiating of group identities.

In the 1980s and 1990s, no less than 123 heavily indebted countries across the Global South embarked on 525 IMF adjustment programs to restructure their economies. Central to this financial leverage is the little-known Paris Club of official creditors, the world's only platform for rescheduling sovereign debt.

Restrictions on academic freedom, persecution and armed conflict have forced many scholars into exile. Dr. Vera Axyonova and Dr. Florian Kohstall will present their book "Academics in exile: Networks, knowledge exchange and new forms of internationalization" and discuss with exiled scholars from Ukraine.

Germany has recently come under criticism for its reluctance to provide arms to Ukraine following the Russian invasion. For more than a century, however, Germany has more traditionally been criticized for its role in the proliferation of small arms trafficking around the world.

The Russian state-controlled “Russia Today” media network was founded in 2005 and later emerged as the Kremlin’s primary instrument of influencing international audiences.

Racism against Eastern Europeans reflects the long-standing imperial rivalry between the West and Russia. As such, it has played a part in the genesis and conduct of the current war in Ukraine.

Inwieweit ist der Widerstand innerhalb von Belarus heutzutage möglich? Wie kämpfen die Hunderttausende wegen der politischen Verfolgungen geflohenen Belaruss*innen für die Demokratie in ihrem Land? Welche Rolle spielt dabei die feministische und Gender-Agenda?

Dr. Judith Kohlenberger analyzes how Ukrainian refugees arriving in Austria and in Poland differ in terms of their sociodemographic background, choice of host country as well as their return and stay intentions. Preliminary evidence suggests a highly self-selective migration from Ukraine to host countries, having implications for labor market integration.

The lecture shows how Moscow began to support far-right political forces to gain leverage on European politics and undermine the liberal-democratic consensus in the West. It discusses relations between Russia and the European far-right since the escalation of the Russian war against Ukraine in February 2022.

RECET presents its Ukraine Fellows and the programm for the upcoming semester

Wie leben Menschen im Krieg? Wie geht eine Gesellschaft mit der Allgegenwart von Gewalt und Tod und einer ständigen unkontrollierbaren Bedrohung um? Cathrin Kahlweit (Süddeutsche Zeitung) & Ivo Mijnssen (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) waren seit Beginn des russischen Angriffskriegs mehrfach in der Ukraine.

The book focuses on a time when the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe banked their hopes for prosperity and stability on enhanced relations with the West.

We kindly invite you to the keynote speech of the workshop “Varieties of Economic Nationalism in Cold War Europe: Small State Responses to Economic Change, 1960s to 1980s”, which will be held by Prof. Bo Stråth.

The aim of our workshop is to reassess the gradual shift from the Keynesianism of capitalism’s golden age to neoclassical economics and the liberalization of trade and capital flows, which extended from the 1960s to the 1980, from a small state perspective.

The book project extends from the steel industry's boom years of the early 1970s to the crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s and concludes with the transformation following the end of the Cold War. The talk will focus on the social impact of the steel crisis and specifically address those disadvantaged by structural change and their scope for action.

We live in an increasingly globalized world—but the prehistory of this status quo outside the West is still not very well known.

A locked door inside a Belgrade apartment has kept one family separated from their past for over 70 years. As the filmmaker begins an intimate conversation with her mother, the political fault line running through their home reveals a house and a country haunted by history.

For the vast majority of the world’s population, the global migration regime appears as a form of unfreedom. We will examine the contested meanings of migration, its multiple forms as well as the complex entanglements of freedom and unfreedom in global migration from historical, anthropological, and activist perspectives.

Both Hungary and Poland have turned away from liberalism in recent years, at times openly embracing concepts like "illiberal democracy." In this discussion, two former central bankers in their countries will reflect upon the trajectory of economic liberalism in post-communist transformation, the current state of affairs, and the perspectives for the future.

Isama Zing is a Bratislava based producer, DJ, member of Mäss micro-collective and SHAPE platform affiliate. After turning to cello, voice and electronics at the early age of 15 he later moved to experimenting with the Warp-esque side of the 10s electronics to eventually arrive at a crossroads of club-deconstructions and experimental pop production. His…

Focusing specifically on Central Europe, this talk explores the popular political and social movements on both the right and the left that sought to pause, reverse, or regulate globalization after the First World War. The “freedom” of movement was increasingly pit against freedom from dependence on imported foods and energy, freedom from the vacillations of…

Within this multi-disciplinary discussion, scholars from Europe, Mainland China, and Hongkong will offer their insightful views on the development – as well as the lack of – of freedom in modern Chinese history over the past century. Each speaker will focus on one specific aspect ranging from economics, political ideology, to women and gender.

In the country with the biggest police force in Europe, Ukraine, there is a lack of policemen in rural communities, therefore villagers of Stara Zburievka village have found a solution. They chose two local men - the smartest and the strongest - to take care of the public order.

What can literature do in times of war and crisis? How can literature as an artistic form and participant in discourse convey freedom? The event will focus on the role and difficulties of literature in contemporary society and discuss especially the situation in Ukraine and Poland.

Der Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit dem Zusammenhang von Grenzen und Mobilität im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Es wird gezeigt, dass Grenzen nach und nach zu machtvollen Sortiermaschinen umgebaut werden. Mehr denn je produzieren sie Mobilität und Immobilität gleichermaßen und wirken als Schwellen der Ungleichheit.

Wo beginnt und endet die menschliche Freiheit in einer digitalen Welt? Was geschieht mit unseren Daten und was bedeutet das für uns? Welche neuen Ungleichheiten und Gefahren entstehen daraus? Um diese und weitere Fragen mit vielen Fallbeispielen wird sich die Diskussion drehen.

Andrej Prozorov  (Ukrainian: Андрій Прозоров; own spelling: Andrej Prozorov; born in Odessa) is a Ukrainian saxophonist, composer, and respresentative of jazz and of world music. He gained prominence through his collaboration with Joe Zawinul.

Was passiert mit der russischen Gesellschaft? Wie reagieren die Menschen in Russland auf den Krieg gegen die Ukraine? Wird der seit Kriegsbeginn laufende Exodus liberal gesinnter Russen weitergehen?

Auf der Suche nach einem Begriff der Freiheit stoßen wir auf Erfahrungen von Unfreiheit. Zu einem politischen Freiheitsverständnis gehört es, dass nicht jede Empfindung beschränkter Freiheit für andere relevant werden muss. Der Eindruck von Unfreiheit steht aber am Anfang jeder tieferen theoretischen Beschäftigung mit Freiheit.

Die Kulturveranstaltung „Körperkonzepte“ verbindet aktuelle wissenschaftliche Forschung mit kritischen Stimmen der jungen aktivistischen Kunst sowie mit Konzepten feministischer Kulturpolitik.

The lecture will discuss the possibilities of microhistorical research of the changes taking place within the Polish families under the German occupation in the peripheral territories.

Im Juni 2018 sagte Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Deutschland habe in den 1930er Jahren einen "einzigartigen Zivilisationsbruch" vollzogen. John Connelly möchte die Energien hinter diesem Bruch untersuchen.

In Nested Nationalism, Dr. Goff argues that there was a recursive relationship between majority and minority nationalisms in the Soviet Union. She critically examines asymmetries of power and processes of minoritization in the Soviet Union, and explains why history writing on this topic has proven so problematic in the past.

The lecture interrogates development schemes between Ghana and the Soviet Union - notably the Ghana Fishing Corporation, the Cotton Textile Factory, and the Soviet Geological Survey Team from 1957-1966. These engagements were supposed to highlight the benefits and opportunities of Soviet-partnership. However, these dreams never fully materialized.

Russia's perception of the past excludes Ukraine and Ukrainians from the list of sovereign actors of history. Ukrainian vision presupposes at least a millenial historical existence of Ukraine. The clash of these two visions has turned into an existential threat for Ukraine, and no less important - for Russia.

By examining two early legal cases featuring the alleged counterfeiting of Xiangmao Honey Soap, this talk shows how the Chinese language and linguistic practices in Chinese commercial culture often stymied Western manufacturers and import companies’ attempts to pursue and prosecute suspected Chinese copycats.

Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies invites Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET), University of Vienna. Presentation by Dr. Katarzyna Nowak (VWI), commented by Prof. Dr. Claudia Kraft (RECET).

Was sind die wichtigsten Herausforderungen für unsere Demokratien und wie sind sie entstanden? Sind die Bürger:innen unzufrieden weil sie mehr Demokratie wollen oder weil sie die autoritäre Alternative besser finden? Wie sollen wir unsere Demokratien stärker und resilienter machen?

This seminar explores the assistance that leading American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provided to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic reforms during the 1980s. The talk will look at China-focused NGOs, such as the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, as well as at older philanthropic NGOs like the Ford and Rockefeller…

The joint seminar brings together scholars from three countries who approach Estonia’s privileged status within the strictly centralized Soviet economy from different angles to investigate the room for maneuver of local actors before and during perestroika and its impact on Estonia’s exceptionally successful post-Soviet economic performance.

After the US war in Vietnam, close to 800,000 Vietnamese left the country by boat, survived, and sought refuge throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. This is the story of what happened in the camps. In Camps raises key questions that remain all too relevant today: Who is a refugee? Who determines this status? And how does it change over time?

On April 3, 2022 Hungarian voters will get a chance to re-elect FIDESz and PM Orban for his fourth consecutive term. This time around several opposition parties selected an opponent, Péter Márki-Zay, in a democratic primary to challenge FIDESz's overbearing majority. Márki-Zay's vision for a post-2022 Hungary includes a promise of restoring constitutional…

This workshop brings together a multidisciplinary team of art historians, literary scholars, performance and media studies scholars and historians. It will provide an opportunity to map the digital research landscape in Cultural Studies and Cultural Heritage Studies in the various countries of Central and Central Eastern Europe.

In this seminar, Professor Warlouzet will talk about his upcoming book, to be published in January 2022 in French and entitled "Europe vs. Europe. Social, neoliberal and industrial Europe". It deals with the history of European economic and social policies since 1945.

The talk exposes the political dynamic in post-1991 Ukraine through the concept of “performative citizenship” (Isin 2017) that presumes a political struggle claiming for rights rather than a pre-existing institutional design providing them.

Drawn from Natasha Wheatley's book manuscript of the same title, this talk shows how the serial remaking and unmaking of empire in Central Europe placed extraordinary pressure on sovereignty’s two central fictions – its singularity and its immortality.

Masuda Hajimu's "Cold War Crucible" is an inquiry into the peculiar nature of the Cold War. It examines not only centers of policymaking but seeming aftereffects of Cold War politics during the Korean War: suppression of counterrevolutionaries in China, the White Terror in Taiwan, the Red Purge in Japan, and McCarthyism in the United States.

Das europäische Migrationsregime steht unter Druck. Zuletzt stellten die Mobilitätsbeschränkungen in Folge der Covid19-Pandemie die innereuropäische Bewegungsfreiheit massiv in Frage. Welche politischen Herausforderungen ergeben sich daraus für die Europäische Union?

Scholars generally locate the origins of structural adjustment programs in the early- or mid-1980s. But the IMF management and staff began explicitly using the term in 1973 and then succeeded in cultivating a consensus among IMF members in favor of structural adjustment programs in 1976.

This presentation will address the transnational roots, debates and conditions for the diachronic implementation of a game-changing policy: The EU’s Free Movement of Persons. Its main objective is to highlight the revealing value of critical historical analysis in this field and the normative legacies on human mobility rights in the European integration…

The talk uses the lens of childhood and youth to provide an unconventional diachronic exploration of the relationship between political crises, the longer processes of political and social transformation and their implications for the lives of the young.

The history of Russian Germans is a history of intensive mobility across space and time. In this conference, we want to approach the global history and the global present of this particular group of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe from an interdisciplinary angle.

Observing a considerable continuity of collectivist economic thought in Eastern Europe and China, the conference participants will ask whether remarkable new collectivist ideas have managed to strike roots in these societies during the past few decades.

The idea of paying a basic income to people, whether or not they are working or looking for work, is one of the most radical and controversial social policy proposals of our time. How can the unconditional basic income transform capitalism and does it lead to communism, as many opponents of the idea are arguing?

War der Sturm auf das Kapitol das fatale Ende einer unrühmlichen Präsidentschaft oder der Anfang einer anderen amerikanischen Republik? Die Historikerin Lisa McGirr von der Harvard University hat den Aufstieg von Rechtspopulisten und Rechtsradikalen bereits zu einer Zeit untersucht, als noch niemand von einer „Krise der Demokratie“ sprach.

Workshop of the MTA-SZTE-ELTE research group and of the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET)

Im Sommer 1991 begann mit den Unabhängigkeitserklärungen von Slowenien und Kroatien der blutige Zerfall des sozialistischen Jugoslawiens. Es folgten lange Kriege, das Abkommen von Dayton und der Konflikt im Kosovo. Die westliche Intervention beendete die Kriege, doch hat sie auch dauerhaften Frieden und Entwicklungsperspektiven gebracht?

The Permanent Conference of Austrian and Czech Historians (SKÖTH)

It is a common assumption that Russia's turbulent transition to a market economy was inspired, or even imposed, by Western advisors. But the ideas behind Russia's economic transformation were not an alien concept imported from the West in the 1990s.

Schwächung des Rechtsstaats, Missachtung des Parlaments, steigender staatlicher Einfluss auf die Medien: Wird Österreich unter der Kanzlerschaft von Sebastian Kurz dem illiberalen System von Ungarn unter Viktor Orbán immer ähnlicher?

Workers’ self-management was one of the unique features of communist Yugoslavia. It prevailed, though not without challenges.

How have people been learning, practicing and knowing sexuality, gender roles and gender awareness before and after 1989? What imprint did the social and political transformations leave on historical legacies, actors and structures of sexual education?

For decades, deindustrialization has been inflicting collateral damage far beyond displaced manufacturing workers, by affecting the lives of working-class families and driving formerly industrialized areas into deprivation.

Governments in East Central Europe have long relied on radical neoliberal reforms as a strategy to leave socialism behind and become members of the European Union. However, since the Great Financial Crisis, neoliberalism has become politicized, and some governments - most notably Hungary and Poland - have started to experiment with more statist and…

If we want to understand the cultural forms and conceptual repertoire behind today’s culture wars in East Central Europe, we need to dig before 1989. With the help of the concept of ‘narratives of democracy,’ this talk by Dr. Michal Kopeček will go beyond the liberal vs. populist scheme prevailing today and offer a more nuanced reading.

The hiSTORY of transformation from state socialism contains multiple STORIES - among them many “His- and Her-Stories” which imply different ways of experiencing and coping with sociopolitical changes related to sexuality and gender. Drawing on her research on Czech Normalization, Libora Oates-Indruchová (Graz) asks how focussing on herstories of…

Magda Szcześniak (Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw) explores queer counterpublics of the late 1980s and 1990s in Poland and the question of visibility of non-normative sexualities in the framework of RECET's series "His- and Her-Stories of Transformation".

Prof. Dr. Bela Tomka (University of Szeged) will present and discuss his book "Austerities and Aspirations: A Comparative History of Growth, Consumption, and Quality of Life in East Central Europe since 1945" (CEU Press, 2020).