About

The Study Group for Minority History (SGMH) is a forum devoted to the study of minority groups in the national and regional histories of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe from the Napoleonic Wars to the contemporary past. Its key aim is to assist scholars, currently working in this area of inquiry by fostering international networks to help promote and share their research. It also seeks to encourage collaborative forms of scholarship across different aspects of minority history such as the evolution of identity, diaspora-formation, inter-communal engagements, the development of cultural institutions, relations with states and state actors and the impact of regional conflicts. In addition, the SGMH aims to encourage the use of new methodologies, interdisciplinary scholarly approaches and theoretical frameworks in the study of minority groups.

The SGMH main activities include:

  • a biannual 2-day workshop allowing scholars to present and receive feedback on their current research;
  • events organised through the BASEES Annual Conference including panels, roundtables and symposia;
  • publication of papers presented at the SGMH events in relevant peer-review journals, as well as non-specialist publications dedicated to the on-going research in the field.

The group’s current organisers are Olena Palko (University of Basel, Switzerland), Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia, UK), and Raul Cârstocea (Maynooth University)

The SGMH is open to all scholars working in relevant research areas at academic institutions from across Europe and internationally. Registration and membership are free. For further information, membership inquiry and/or to join our mailing list please e-mail: sgmh.basees@gmail.com

Membership in the group is free.

Dr Olena Palko is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History, University of Basel (Switzerland). She is the author of several publications on early Soviet cultural history in Ukraine. Her current project “Red Tower of Babel: Soviet minorities experiment in interwar Ukraine“ investigates the Soviet nationalities policies during the interwar period. She is the author of ‘Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin’ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and a co-editor of ‘Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century‘ (MQUP, 2022)
Dr Samuel Foster is a Lecturer at the University of East Anglia’s School of History, and the University of Gloucestershire. He received his PhD at the University of East Anglia,
where he also served as project manager for the John Corsellis Archive. His research focuses on the First World War in the (pre-)Yugoslavian Balkans on which he has written and presented extensively including contributions to the BBC and International Encyclopedia of the First World War. He is the author of ‘Yugoslavia in the British Imagination. Peace, War and Peasants before Tito’ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021)
Dr Raul Cârstocea is an Assistant Professor in Twentieth-Century European History at Maynooth University (Ireland). He is the co-editor, with Éva Kovács, of Modern Antisemitisms in the Peripheries: Europe and its Colonies, 1880-1945 (Vienna, 2019), and the author of numerous publications on antisemitism, fascism, nationalism and nation-building projects in Eastern Europe and their impact on minority groups. He is co-editor of the series Modern Histories of Politics and Violence at Bloomsbury Academic and Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe at the Council of Europe.
Subscription officer: Julia Elena Grieder is currently a PhD candidate in Eastern European History at the University of Basel. Her research is is dedicated to non-titular minorities in newly implemented territories of post-war Soviet Ukraine.

 
SGMH Communication assistant: Pierre Van Cutsem (he/his) holds two Master’s degrees from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) (in Germanic languages and literatures (2015) and Slavic languages and literatures (2018). He is a scholar and translator of Polish weird fiction writer Stefan Grabiński. Pierre is currently a PhD student at the doctoral school of the Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach (Poland).