Crisis, Conflict and Collapse: Social Disruption and Minority Communities
SGMH’s Mini-Symposium as part of the XI ICCEES World Congress, 21-25 July 2025, London
Keeping with the Congress’ broader, transnational theme of ‘Disruption’, the SGMH
colloquium will explore the impact periods of sudden or prolonged social and political
disruption have had on minority communities across Anatolia, Eastern and
Southeastern Europe from the mid-nineteenth century to the 2010s. The event itself
will consist of three panels, with each followed by an audience Q&A session. Our key
themes include identity formation, borders and border regimes and the immediate to
mid-term consequences of imperial state collapse.
Schedule
Panel 1. Constructing and Deconstructing Minority Identities in the Modern Era
Katia Denysova (University of Tübingen): ‘Cultural Exchange in Times of War: The Case
Study of Alexandra Exter’s Art Studio in Kyiv, 1918–19’
Valeria Chelaru (Babeș-Bolyai University): ‘From the empire’s borderland to the periphery of the national state: Bessarabian Jewry during the last years of Greater Romania (1930-
1940)’
Igor Vukadinović (Serbian Academy of Science and Arts): ‘Promotion of ‘National Equality’ in the Context of Democratic Regression: The Communist Regime and the Position of
National Minorities in Yugoslavia, 1945–1969’
Panel 2. Minorities, Imperialism and European Border Regimes from the Nineteenth to Twenty-First Centuries
Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia): ‘Rebellion and Resistance in the Lower
Neretva Region, 1875-1882’
Oksana Ermolaeva (Complutense University of Madrid): ‘Transborder Mobility Challenges
and Responses in Times of Crisis: The Case of the Russian Northwestern Border’
Martin Hochel (Comenius University in Bratislava): ‘Challenges of Cross-Border Funding of Ethnic Hungarian Municipalities in Slovakia’
Panel 3. The End and Afterlives of Empire in Anatolia and Eastern Europe
Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia): ‘Orphans of Revolution, Hostages of Empire: The Russian Expeditionary Force and the Great War’s Macedonian Front, 1915-1919’
Mikhail Akulov (Nazarbayev University): ‘Slogans and Knives: Crime and Politics in Kyiv
in the Winter of 1918’
Elodie Gavrilof (CERCEC/French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul): ‘The War After
the War : Armenian Orphans Going Back to School After the Genocide (1918-1923)
Panel 4. Romania and Romanian Identity through Peace and War
Andrei Dan Sorescu (New Europe College, Bucharest): ‘Trajan’s Colonists and the Others:
Minorities, Colonisation, and Colonial Anxieties in Nineteenth Century Romania’
Raul Carstocea (New Europe College, Bucharest): ‘Call Me By Your Name: Taxonomies of Aromanians in Nineteenth-Century and Interwar Romania’
Giuseppe Motta (Sapienza University): ‘Back to the Village! The Discourse on
Modernization in the Age of a Greater Romania’
Study Group for Minority History 