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2023 Best First Book Proposal Prize: Winner announced
[Winner] Vita Zalar (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana): The Political Economy of Antigypsyism: Habsburg and Post-Habsburg Perspectives Vita Zalar’s forthcoming monograph, The Political Economy of Antigypsyism: Habsburg and Post-Habsburg Perspectives, breaks new ground by offering a historical materialist reading of the imperial and post-imperial forms of structural racism against…
CFP: The war in Ukraine and its impact on ethno-religious minorities in the region
2023-01-30 Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas, and escalated into a full-scale attack in February 2022, was a challenge to the entire system of international relations that has developed since the end of World War II. Researchers and politicians are analyzing the…
New Publication Alert
Olena Palko (2022) Between Moscow, Warsaw and the Holy See: The Case of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz Amidst the Early Soviet Anti-Catholic Campaign, Revolutionary Russia. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546545.2022.2136353 This article offers a micro-history of Soviet anti-religious actions during the mid-1920s through a reconstruction of the investigation of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz and his forced collaboration with the Soviet secret…
Episode 33. Ronald G. Suny: Armenia, Soviet Studies and the Future of Minority History
In our final episode (for now), we talk to Ronald Grigor Suny, the William H. Sewell Junior. Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago. Besides a long-standing reputation for having been an early exponent…
Episode 32. Petre Matei: Localizing the history of the ‘forgotten victims’: The Roma in Romania
In this week’s episode, Petre Matei (Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania) talks to Raul Cârstocea (Maynooth University) about the history of the Roma in Romania, from the late 19th century to the present. Petre Matei argues for a more nuanced history of the Roma, questioning dominant narratives of…
SGMH First Book Proposal Prize
THE BASEES STUDY GROUP FOR MINORITY HISTORY (SGMH) PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK PROPOSAL The Prize for Best First Book Proposal in Minority History will be launched by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History (SGMH) in September 2022 to recognise scholarly excellence among early career academics seeking to publish their original research with a…
Episode 31. Timothy Blauvelt & Francis King: Clientelism and Nationality in Early Soviet Abkhazia
In this podcast, Timothy Blauvelt of Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia, in conversation with Francis King of the University of East Anglia’s East Centre, considers the early years of Soviet Abkhazia and its well-connected leader, Nestor Lakoba. The discussion ranges over Lakoba’s role in the revolution, his career as the indispensable Bolshevik figure in Soviet…
Episode 30. Jakub Beneš: The Rural-Urban Divide in East-Central Europe
Jakub Beneš, Associate Professor in Central European History at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, joins us to discuss the role of peasant communities and anti-urban sentiment in the socio-political landscape of Austria-Hungary, its successor states and the independent Balkans. Challenging earlier characterisations of the peasantry as inherently reactionary, Jakub considers how the…
Episode 29. Martin-Oleksandr Kysly & Austin Charron: Crimean Tatars and the contested status of Crimea
Episode 29. Martin-Oleksandr Kysly & Austin Charron: Crimean Tatars and the contested status of Crimea In this episode, Austin Charron (University of Wisconsin-Madison, http://www.austincharron.com/) and Oleksandr-Martin Kysly (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) discuss the experiences of the Crimean Tatars before the Second World War and their forced deportation to Central Asia and Siberia in 1944.…
Episode 28. Natalia Aleksiun: Poland’s Jews in the 20th century
In this episode, Natalia Aleksiun, Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, discusses the social dynamics of interethnic relations in interwar Poland, particularly in relation to the Holocaust. One of the characteristics discussed is the double marginalisation of Jewish women, which made them more susceptible to discrimination regarding education, professional choices…
Episode 27. Catherine Wanner & Julia Buyskykh: Religious Minorities in Ukraine and Poland
Episode 27. Catherine Wanner & Julia Buyskykh: Religious Minorities in Ukraine and Poland In this episode, Catherine Wanner, Professor of History, Anthropology and Religious Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, and Julia Buyskykh, Research Fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and co-founder of the Centre for Applied…
Episode 26. Antony Polonsky: From Apartheid South Africa to Jewish History in Poland
In this episode, Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust History at Brandeis University talks to Jan Rybak, Early Career Fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. For several decades, Professor Polonsky has been at the forefront of Polish Jewish historiography. Having grown up in Apartheid South Africa, he came to Poland to…
Episode 25. Roundtable: Contested Minorities in the ‘New Europe’
Roundtable participants: Anca Filipovici (Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, in Cluj, Romania), Christopher Wendt (European University Institute in Florence), Giuseppe Motta (Sapienza University of Rome) and Petru Negură (IOS). Among the many challenges facing the new, or enlarged, nation-states that arouse on the territories of the former empires of Central, Eastern and Southeastern…
Call for Papers
BASEES 2023 Annual Conference, University of Glasgow, 31 March – 2 April 2023 The British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) invites proposals for panels and roundtables, and papers for its 2023 annual conference. We plan to hold BASEES 2023 in-person from the 31st of March to the 2nd of April, which will…
History Past, Present & Future- The IHR Centenary Festival
Join us at the Institute of Historical Researchat Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU on 15 July 2022, 2:00PM – 7:30PM for The IHR Centenary Festival ‘History Past, Present & Future’, where we will present our Podcast Series ‘Eastern Europe’s Minorities in a Century of Change’. https://www.history.ac.uk/events/history-past-present-future-ihr-centenary-festival
New Episode Release: Rok Stergar. Persecution and Public Administration in Post-Habsburg Slovenia
Episode 24. Rok Stergar and Samuel Foster: Persecution and Public Administration in Post-Habsburg Slovenia In this episode, we’re joined by Rok Stergar, Associate Professor at the University of Ljubljana and historian of the First World War, Nationalism and the Habsburg Empire in the long nineteenth century, to discuss the repercussions of Austria-Hungary’s collapse in the…
New Podcast Alert: Morgane Labbé: Minority Statistics and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe
Episode 23. Morgane Labbé and Olena Palko: Minority Statistics and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe In this episode, Morgane Labbé, Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, discusses the role of statistics and maps within Eastern and Central European nation-building. She emphasizes the need to consider the historical rise of statistics…
New Publication Alert
Olena, Palko and Fabian Baumann, eds. “Revisiting Soviet Modernity in the Non-Russian Periphery”. Euxeinos – Culture and Governance in the Black Sea Region, Vol. 12, No. 34 (2022). Editorial by Olena Palko and Fabian Baumann Constructing Identities, Ascribing Nationalities: The Polish Minority in Ukraine During Late-imperial and Early-Soviet Rule by Olena Palko Soviet “Modernizing” Strategies towards Jews in…
New Podcast Alert: Barbara Warnock and Elise Bath: Persecution of Roma and Sinti in the Nazi era and after
In this episode, Barbara Warnock, Senior Curator and Head of Education at The Wiener Holocaust Library, and Elise Bath, the Library’s International Tracing Service (ITS) Archive Team Manager, discuss the marginalization and persecution of Roma and Sinti people before and during the Nazi period. Informed by archival resources held by the Library, including the first…
New podcast release: Episode 21. Yohannan Petrovsky-Shtern: Ukraine and the Framing of East European Jewish History
Our podcast series ‘Eastern Europe’s Minorities in a Century of Change’ is back! In the first episode, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Jewish History at Northwestern University) talks to Oleksii Chebotarov (New Europe College) about Jewish communities in the late Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and the challenges…
Call for Papers: Annual Conference of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution
The 48th Conference of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution will take place from 6-8 January 2023 at the University of Southampton, UK. The Study Group was established in 1973 and it aim to promote new approaches to the study of the Russian Revolution, focusing on the period between 1880 and 1932. Affiliated to…
Ukrainisation and Early Soviet Power in Ukraine
Ukrainian Institute London Professor Matthew Pauly (Michigan State University) in conversation with Olena Palko (Birkbeck) Join us to discuss how Ukrainian national culture and language shaped early Soviet power in Ukraine. About this event In a televised address on 21 February that served as a justification of the Kremlin’s escalated aggression against Kyiv, Russian President…
Polish Studies: Today and Tomorrow, virtual conference 8-9 September
Polish Studies: Today and Tomorrow Thursday 8 and Friday 9 September 2022, by Zoom The British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) is holding its annual multi-disciplinary conference on Poland on 8-9 September 2022. Papers are invited on any aspect of contemporary Poland, Polish history or Polish migration, including migration to/from Poland. You…
Study Group for Minority History 