International Conference: Beyond 1989: Childhood and Youth in Times of Political Transformation in the 20th Century

Beyond 1989: Childhood and Youth in Times of Political Transformation in the 20th Century Institute of Advanced Studies at the...

Revolution From Within: Experts, Managers and Technocrats in the Long Transformation of 1989

The programme for our collaborative conference with Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena is now available. The conference will form Imre Kertész Kolleg...

Registration Open for our British Academy Conference: Global Neoliberalism, 7-8 June 2018

Global Neoliberalism: Lost and Found in Translation British Academy Conference 7-8 June 2018 The University of Exeter and 1989 after...

Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe

Professor James Mark’s co-edited volume Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe is now available through...

The Future of the Past: Why the End of Yugoslavia is Still Important

By Ljubica Spaskovska A new socialist model is emerging in the western Balkans. Can its political vocabulary transcend the ethno-national dividing...

Writing Human Rights into the History of State Socialism

By Ned Richardson-Little The collapse of the Communist Bloc in 1989-1991 is viewed as one of the great triumphs of...

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Year: 2017

Imres Kertesz Kolleg Jena Fellowships: Call for Applications

Imres Kertesz Kolleg Jena Fellowships 2018-2019

Call for applications, July 2017

Application deadline: 15 September 2017

The Imre Kertész Kolleg invites applications for Fellowships for the academic year 2018-2019 for periods of residence from three months up to a full academic year. Applications are invited from noted and established scholars in the history of Central and Eastern Europe or neighboring disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, political sciences, philosophy, literary studies or linguistics relevant to the region.

Fellows are expected to conduct a larger scholarly project corresponding to the research profile of the Kolleg. As the Fellowships are writing fellowships either for conceptualizing or finalizing work, fellows are expected to work at the Imre Kertész Kolleg and to reside in Jena for the duration of their fellowship.

Stipends range from € 3.000 to € 5.300 per month according to the academic position at the home institution. The Kolleg will provide work space, support by student research assistants, and will help finding appropriate accommodation in Jena.

Further information on the Kolleg can be found here: www.imre-kertesz-kolleg.uni-jena.de

Application must include:

  • curriculum vitae
  • list of publications
  • project proposal in English (not exceeding 5 pages)
  • a statement on the relevance of the research project to the Kolleg’s research profile (not exceeding 2 pages)

Applications must be received no later than 15 September 2017 and should be sent electronically as one single PDF to the directors of the Kolleg:

Prof. Dr. Joachim v. Puttkamer
Dr. Michal Kopeček
Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena
Leutragraben 1
07743 Jena
Germany
Email: imre-kertesz-kolleg@uni-jena.de

It is advised to study the Notes for Applicants on: http://www.imre-kertesz-kolleg.uni-jena.de/index.php?id=73&l=1

After completion of an external review process, successful candidates will be notified by December 15, 2017.

Informal inquiries may be addressed to the Managing Director of the Kolleg:
Dr. Raphael Utz, on raphael.utz@uni-jena.de or +49-3641-944073.

→ Download the Call for Applications: Imres Kertesz Kolleg Jena Fellowships

Raluca Grosescu article on Judging Communist Crimes in Romania published

Raluca Grosescu’s latest article has been published in the International Journal of Transitional Justice. The article entitled Judging Communist Crimes in Romania: Transnational and Global Influences, shows how the current shifts in Romanian jurisprudence have been built upon, and have drawn inspiration from, a recent global convergence towards the use of ICL for addressing the crimes of dictatorial regimes and the obstacles to their prosecution, such as amnesties or statutory limitations.

Abstract

In 2016, over 25 years after the fall of the communist regime, the Romanian Supreme Court of Justice convicted for the first time two former military officials for political crimes perpetrated in the 1950s, the harshest repressive period of the previous dictatorship. The verdicts marked a radical break with the prior legal approaches to prosecuting communist crimes in this country inasmuch as international criminal law (ICL) was now employed in order to overcome impunity. This article shows how the current shifts in Romanian jurisprudence have been built upon, and have drawn inspiration from, a recent global convergence towards the use of ICL for addressing the crimes of dictatorial regimes and the obstacles to their prosecution, such as amnesties or statutory limitations. It emphasizes the importance of noncoercive exogenous influences in enabling changes in the Romanian process of dealing with the past.

→ Judging Communist Crimes in Romania: Transnational and Global Influences, International Journal of Transitional Justice

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The Other Globalisers conference programme now available

Join the 1989 after 1989 research team for our conference on the “Other Globalisers” – how the socialist and the non-aligned world shaped the rise of post-war economic globalisation. Based at Exeter, this conference is the second in a series of events exploring how processes and practices that emerged from the socialist world shaped the re-globalised world of our times.

The globalisation of the world economy has most often been portrayed as the final triumph of a neoliberal international order led by the West. By focusing on the socialist and the non-aligned world, this conference, by contrast, aims to rethink the histories of postwar globalisation by addressing forces and models of global economic interdependence other than those of Western capitalism. Acknowledging that actors from these worlds could be contributors to the emerging neoliberal consensus, as well as to other forms of regional economic integration and global trade that survive to this day, we hope to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars using different approaches to global interconnectedness, and/or working on a variety of regions.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Day 1 – July 6

The Upper Lounge, Reed Hall, University of Exeter

8.45-9.15         Welcome Drinks

9.15-9.30         Introduction by the Organisers

9.30-11.30       Panel 1: Chronologies of Socialist Globalisations
Discussant: Wolfgang Knöbl (Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung)

Marc-William Palen (University of Exeter) – Marx and Manchester: The Socialist Foundations of Post-1945 Globalisation

James Mark (University of Exeter) – Alternative? Socialist? Writing Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into Postwar Globalisation

Christina Schwenkel (University of California – Riverside) – The Afterlife of Global Socialism: Technology and Mobility in the Postcolony 

11.30-11.45     Refreshment Break

11.45-13.00     Panel 2: Global Integration
Discussant: Federico Romero (European University Institute)

Angela Romano (University of Glasgow) – Competing Plans of Pan-European Cooperation: European Community’s Policy and Soviet Proposals During the 1970s Globalization

Besnik Pula (Virginia Tech) – From Reform Socialism to Transnational Capitalism: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

13.00-14.30     Lunch Break

14.30-16.30     Panel 3: Global Institutions Without Imperialism
Discussant: Richard Toye (University of Exeter)

Johanna Bockman (George Mason University) – Financial Globalisation Through Socialist and Non-Aligned Banks

Max Trecker (Institute for Contemporary History, Berlin) – Globalisation by Import Substitution? The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the Global South

Vlad Pașca (New Europe College) – Global Advocacy or Self-Interested Relativism? Socialist Romania, International Organizations, and the Quest for Economic Development (1960s-1980s)

Ljubica Spaskovska (University of Exeter) – The Non-Aligned, the UN and the Defeat of the ‘New International Economic Order’

16.30-16.45     Coffee Break

16.45-17.45     Round Table Discussion

Johanna Bockman (George Mason University)

Wolfgang Knöbl (Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung)

Federico Romero (European University Institute)

19.00               Drinks Reception

20.30               Conference Dinner


Day 2 – July 7

Innovation Centre, University of Exeter

8.45-9.30         Welcome Drinks

9.30-10.45       Panel 4: Neoliberalism and the Socialist and Nonaligned Worlds
Discussant: James Mark (Exeter)

Patrick Neveling (School of Oriental and African Studies) – The New International Division of Labour before the New International Economic Order: Special Economic Zones and Neoliberal Globalisation since 1947

Tobias Rupprecht (University of Exeter) – “Neoliberal” Ideas in the Communist Periphery

10.45-11.00     Refreshment Break

11.00-13.00     Panel 5: Africa and Alternative Globalisations
Discussant: Patrick Neveling (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Alanna O’Malley (Leiden University) – The Road to UNCTAD: The Exploration of Economic Sovereignty by African Countries at the United Nations, 1958-1962

Darius A’Zami (Renmin University of China) – Extra-Liberal Interdependence: The Land Commission, Heterodox Globalisation and its Roots in Sino-Tanzanian Relations in the Cold War

Theodora Dragostinova (The Ohio State University) – The Second World in the Third: Bulgarian Notions of Economic and Cultural Development in Nigeria, 1976-1982

Pavel Szobi (European University Institute) – Was Angola the “Czechoslovak Africa?” The Obstacles of the ČSSR Support for the MPLA Government Between 1975 and 1992

13.00-14.00     Lunch Break

14.00-16.00     Panel 6: Resources and Experts
Discussant: Piers Ludlow (LSE)

Ned Richardson-Little (University of Exeter) – East Germany and the Failed Dream of Global Socialist Oil Solidarity

Jan Zofka (University of Leipzig) – Coal as the Other Oil: East German Technical Experts and Industrial Expansion in the Socialist World of the 1950s

Shuxi Yin (Hefei University of Technology) – Sino-Soviet Rubber Cooperation, 1950-1953

Andrew Kloiber (McMaster University) – Brewing Global Socialism: Coffee, East Germans and the World, 1949-1989

16.15-17.00     Concluding Discussion


 

If you would like to attend the Other Globaliser’s conference on the 6-7 July, please contact the Project Co-ordinator, Natalie Taylor – N.H.Taylor@exeter.ac.uk

 

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Ljubica Spaskovska’s Monograph Now Available: The Last Yugoslav Generation

Manchester University Press have now published Dr Ljubica Spaskovska‘s new book – The Last Yugoslav Generation: The Rethinking of Youth Politics and Cultures in Late Socialism.

Her monograph examines the development of youth culture and politics in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing specifically on the 1980s. Rather than examining the 1980s as a mere prelude to the violent collapse of the country in the 1990s, the book recovers the multiplicity of political visions and cultural developments that evolved at the time and that have been largely forgotten in subsequent discussion. She argues that the youth of this generation sought to rearticulate the Yugoslav socialist framework in order to reinvigorate it and ‘democratise’ it, rather than destroy it altogether.

Image of Ljubica SpaskovskaLjubica Spaskovska is an Associate Research Fellow working on our research project 1989 after 1989 at the University of Exeter. Her research maps the history of the end of Yugoslavia’s global engagements not only as a subject/phenomenon associated with political/diplomatic history, but also as a broader societal project.

Purchase The Last Yugoslav Generation

 

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Conference programme available: Transnational and Global Dimensions of Justice and Memory Processes 8-9 June

Interested in transnational and global dimensions of justice and memory processes? Would you like to hear papers from three of our 1989 after 1989 academics covering topics such as transnational perspectives on the Kurapaty Memorial Site and transnational advocacy networks and corporate liability for international crimes?

The conference Transnational and Global Dimensions of Justice and Memory Processes in Europe and Latin America will be held in Paris on 8-9 June and the programme is now available.

The conference is organised by the University of Paris Nanterre, the Institut des Sciences sociales du Politiques (CNRS) and the University of Exeter, within the framework of the AHRC funded project The Criminalization of Dictatorial Pasts in Europe and Latin America in Global Perspective.

Transnational and Global Dimensions of Justice and Memory Processes in Europe and Latin America

June 8-9, 2017
Institut culturel roumain
1 rue de l’exposition, Paris

Justice and memory processes that had accompanied the “third wave of democratisation” have been the subject of a large body of academic literature. These works have commonly taken certain approaches. Some have analysed these processes within national borders or by providing comparative accounts of countries seen as discrete units, disconnected from transnational or global developments. Others, by contrast, have tried to account for the criminalization of dictatorships and conflicts in terms of the emergence of international norms based on an ethics of human rights and a “cosmopolitan memory” – often driven by a decontextualized remembrance of the Holocaust. This scholarship has however tended to overgeneralize global trends without always grasping the complexity of local attempts at dealing with the past. In the last ten years, a third approach, focusing on specific transnational entanglements, has gained ground. This emerging literature has started to analyze empirically transnational activism, exchanges of knowledge and expertise at bilateral, regional or international levels, the impact of legal and mnemonic narratives outside their countries of origin, and the role of international organizations and NGOs in dealing with mass violence.

Focusing on Europe and Latin America, this conference aims to take stock of this transnational turn in justice and memory studies and to develop a socio-historical analysis of the circulation of norms, repertoires of collective action and models adopted to deal with the legacies of authoritarian regimes and armed conflicts. It seeks to trace the interconnections and mutual influences of these processes both within Europe and Latin America and between the two regions, as well as the mobilizations of European and Latin American actors in international institutions, global NGOs, or at venues on other continents.

Conference Programme: Transnational and Global Dimensions of Justice and Memory Processes in Europe and Latin America

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Join us for our next conference on State Socialism, Heritage Experts and Internationalism in Heritage Protection after 1945

Join us in Exeter for our conference exploring the rising contributions of socialist and non-aligned actors to the development of heritage at both domestic and international levels.

Conference dates: 21-22 November 2017

Conference location: The University of Exeter

Call for Papers deadline: 20 June 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS

Histories of heritage usually perceive their object of study as a product of western modernity, and exclude the socialist world. Yet, understood as a cultural practice and an instrument of cultural power, and as a “right and a resource”, heritage has played important roles in managing the past and present in many societies and systems. In the postwar period, preservation became a key element of culture in socialist and non-aligned states from China, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc to Asia, Latin America and Africa. Attention paid to the peoples’ traditions and heritage became a way to manifest the superiority and historical necessity of socialist development. However, the contribution of socialist states and experts to the development of the idea of heritage is still to be fully excavated.

The conference aims to understand the rising contributions of socialist and non-aligned actors to the development of heritage at both domestic and international levels. This phenomenon was in part the result of country-specific factors – such as a reaction to rapid industrial development; the destruction of both the Second World War or wars of national liberation; and the necessity to (re)-invent national traditions on socialist terms. But it was also due the growth of a broader international consensus on international heritage protection policies – in which socialist and non-aligned states and their experts played an important role. To this end, the conference will also address the relationship between socialist conceptions of heritage and those found in the capitalist world: to what extent can we discern the convergence of Eastern and Western dynamics of heritage discourses and practices over the second half of the twentieth century? To what degree did heritage professionals from socialist states play a role in the formation of the transnational and transcultural heritage expertise? To what extent did heritage still play a role in Cold War competition? Socialist states claimed that their respect for progressive traditions and material culture distinguished their superior methods of development from that of the capitalist world. Non-Aligned countries often attempted to blend aspects of socialist and capitalist logics of cultural heritage politics.

Conference themes to be addressed in papers include (but are not limited to):

  • The rise of interest in, and conceptualisation of, heritage under socialist and non-aligned states;
  • the transnational and transcultural circulation of ideas about heritage both within an expanding world of socialist states and across Cold War ideological divides;
  • the role of socialist experts in international debates over heritage;
  • the role of individual actors as cultural brokers within the cultural heritage field;
  • the role of international organisations, such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM, UIA and others in providing a platform for professional communication and knowledge exchange involving the socialist world;
  • the role of the Cold War in the development of heritage;
  • the role of national traditions, experience and transnational cooperation across the Cold War divide in the creation of concepts and practices of socialist heritage;
  • the legacies of the work of socialist states and experts in contemporary heritage practices.

 

Abstracts of 300-500 words, together with an accompanying short CV should be submitted to Natalie Taylor (N.H.Taylor@exeter.ac.uk) by June 20, 2017.

The selected participants will be notified by July 20, 2017.

Funding opportunities for travel and accommodation are available, but we ask that potential contributors also explore funding opportunities at their home institutions.

To download a copy of the Call for Papers and for further information about the conference go to our State Socialism, Heritage Experts and Internationalism conference page


 

It is kindly supported by Exeter University’s Leverhulme Trust-funded project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective.

Conference conveners:

Prof. James Mark and Dr. Nelly Bekus, University of Exeter, Leverhulme Trust-funded project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective

Dr. Michael Falser, Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context, Heidelberg University

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Leibniz ScienceCampus EEGA PhD Proposal Scholarship and Training Available

Are you a Postgraduate student who would like to develop a PhD proposal in the field of Eastern European Studies, European Studies, Global and Area Studies? Are you based in Germany or is your current institution affiliated with the Leibniz ScienceCampus? If so, the EEGA postgraduate grant could be for you!

Call for Applications:

EEGA@future: Postgraduate-Grants (Preparation of PhD)
Deadline for submissions: 15 May 2017
Start of funding: 1 October 2017
Funding period: 3 months

What is the Leibniz ScienceCampus EEGA?

The Leibniz ScienceCampus “Eastern Europe – Global Area” (EEGA) is committed to developing new research perspectives on Eastern Europe, engaging in knowledge exchange activities on the region with stakeholders, and promoting young researchers. It follows the idea that the multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted examination of processes of globalisation are a key for a better understanding of actual societal developments. The focus is on Eastern Europe’s diverse, tension-filled, and sometimes paradoxical globalisation projects “from within” and “from the outside”, and thus, on the self-positioning of Eastern European societies under the global condition.

The EEGA brings together interdisciplinary knowledge and expertise from researchers affiliated with both universities and research institutes in the Leipzig-Jena-Halle science region. Together with partners from the region, the EEGA explores the fields of migration and mobilities; business strategies and political economies; cultural and intellectual perspectives and identities; and political integration in a changing global arena. Overcoming prejudices and clichés, some of which are rooted in the era of the Cold War, and promoting an informed understanding of Eastern Europe in its diverse traditions and positions, developments and (internal) dynamics, are the primary mission.

The eight partner institutions that form the ScienceCampus EEGA are the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig (IfL), the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies, Halle (Saale) (IAMO), the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Leipzig University (UL), the Fraunhofer Center for International Management and Knowledge Economy (IMW), the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale) (MPI).

Details of the Scholarship and Training

The ScienceCampus EEGA invites applications by talented Postgraduate students who are intending to develop a PhD proposal in the field of research of the EEGA, ie Eastern European Studies, European Studies, Global and Area Studies, and the disciplines involved in the ScienceCampus. The EEGA will provide both financial as well as topical support to scholarship holders. The EEGA facilitates access to existing infrastructures at the member institutions of the EEGA. Scholarship holders get the opportunity to participate in existing PhD- and institutional colloquia and other events of participating institutes The ScienceCampus also offers additional training measures and services to the scholarship holders. They will get the chance to receive specific counselling from EEGA PostDocs, individual consultation with research area coordinators in the EEGA, training sessions organised by EEGA, and financial support of participation in existing courses at other universities or research institutions in Germany.

Eligible for Postgraduate-Grants are MA students from Germany, foreign Postgraduate students who are currently situated in Germany and Postgraduate students from institutions in other countries that are related to the members of the EEGA through cooperation agreements. Main criterion for selection is the compatibility of the Postgraduate student’s research interest with the focus and aims of the EEGA.

Eligible are Postgraduate students only. Generally, the submission of the MA thesis should not date back longer than 12 months.

Applications should be related to the research focus of one or more research areas of the EEGA. The 5 research areas of EEGA are:

  • Research Area 1: Mobilities and Migration Regimes in Eastern Europe
    (Coordination: Judith Miggelbrink and Helena Flam)
  • Research Area 2: The Self-Positioning of Eastern Europe in a New World Order In-The-Making
    (Coordination: Frank Hadler and Matthias Middell)
  • Research Area 3: Business Strategies and Frameworks of Political Economies
    (Coordination: Sebastian Henn, Thomas Glauben and Thorsten Posselt)
  • Research Area 4: Cultural and Intellectual Perspectives and Identifications
    (Coordination: Jürgen Heyde, Yvonne Kleinmann and Stefan Troebst)
  • Research Area 5: Eastern Europe in Times of Europeanisation
    (Coordination: Gert Pickel and Holger Lengfeld)

Further information about this opportunity and how to apply

→ Leibniz ScienceCampus website

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Post-Doctoral Vacancy with PanEur1970s and EUI

The European University Institute (EUI) has a vacancy for a Research Assistant in the Department of History and Civilization working under the direction of Professor Frederico Romero as part of the PanEur1970s – Looking West: the European Socialist regimes facing pan-European cooperation and the European Community project.

The successful applicant will research into socialist Romania’s archives and other sources on elites’ views, policies and ideas on processes of European cooperation and integration in the 1970s. Full participation in the project activities, including publication of research papers and essays, participation in conferences and dissemination activities will be required.

Post-Doctoral Position in Romania and European Co-operation in the 1970s
24 months, full time (30/30) (anticipated start date September 2017)
Based in Florence
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 21/04/2017

The appointed candidate will receive a monthly net salary of approximately 1800 EUR + allowances if applicable (See Conditions of Employment)

Funding for research missions and participation to international conferences will also be provided.

The candidate will have a PhD in History (preferably international or economic history) or in a closely related discipline, as well as research experience on Romania’s archival records.

S/he will be fluent in Romanian and have good command of English.

Knowledge of other European languages may constitute an advantage but is not required.

How to apply

Applicants should read the Vacancy notice first. Applicants must fill in the on-line application form and upload documents as requested. Only applications submitted through the on line form will be accepted.

For more information contact: serena.belligoli@eui.eu

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Join us for our conference on the “Other Globalisers”, Exeter 6-7 July 2017

The Other Globalisers: How the Socialist and the Non-Aligned World Shaped the Rise of Post-War Economic Globalisation

Location: Exeter University, UK
Date: 6-7 July 2017

Abstract Deadline: 18 March 2017

Papers are now invited for our exciting conference addressing how the socialist and non-aligned world shaped the rise of post-war economic globalisation. This conference is the second in a series of events exploring how processes and practices that emerged from the socialist world shaped the re-globalised world of our times.

CONFERENCE SYNOPSIS

In the wake of the Second World War, the world economy began to ‘reglobalise’ – following the disintegrative processes of the interwar period. This story has most often been told as the final triumph of a neoliberal international order led by the West. Recent research, however, suggests that the creation of our modern interconnected world was not driven solely by the forces of Western capitalism, nor was it the only model of global economic interdependence that arose in the second half of the twentieth century. This conference aims to rethink the histories of postwar globalisation by focusing on the socialist and non-aligned world, whose roles in the rise of an economically interconnected world have received substantially less attention.

This conference aspires to address a wide variety of processes, practices and projects – such as efforts to create alternative systems of international trade, new business practices, through to theoretical conceptualisations of economic interconnectedness – and examine a broad range of actors, such as e.g. governments, experts, international institutions, and business ventures. It will also explore whether such initiatives were alternative at all: as recent research has suggested, actors from these worlds could be contributors to the emerging neoliberal consensus, as well as to other forms of regional economy and global trade that survive to this day. We also hope to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars using different approaches to global interconnectedness, and/or working on a variety of regions (e.g. Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union).

Abstracts of 300-500 words, together with an accompanying short CV should be submitted to Natalie Taylor (N.H.Taylor@exeter.ac.uk) by 18 March 2017.

The selected participants will be notified by the end of March 2017.

Funding opportunities for travel and accommodation are available, but we ask that potential contributors also explore funding opportunities at their home institutions.

This event is kindly supported by Exeter University’s Leverhulme Trust-funded project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective.

The full call for papers is available on our conference page

→ Download the Call for Papers The Other Globalisers

 

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