Yearly Archives: 2025

Calls for Papers

CFP | Colliding Women

Womanhood Narratives in the Modernisms of Central and Eastern Europe (1870-1970)

Organization Committee: Naïma Berkane, Mateusz Chmurski, Cécile Rousselet & Clara Royer

When: June 4-5, 2026
Where: Paris
Submission Guidelines: Your proposals (in French or English), in the form of a title, a summary of around 300 words and a bio-bibliographical note, should be sent by December 1, 2025 to: femininenarratives@gmail.com

Scientific Committee: Biljana Andonovska, Arnaud Bikard, Mateusz Chmurski, Alessandro Gallichio, Petra James, Luba Jurgenson, Jean-François Laplénie, Jasmina Lukić, Lena Magnone, Jelena Petrović, Alexandra Wojda Continue reading CFP | Colliding Women →

CEFRES Team

Domenico Scagliusi – Research & CV

« Le Tribunal des héritiers : la mémoire du Goulag dans la littérature russophone contemporaine (2000-2022) »

Axes de recherche 1 et 2 : Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices & Normes et transgressions

Ses recherches portent sur la fiction littéraire en langue russe publiée entre 2000 et 2020, ayant pour sujet principal le Goulag et la transmission de sa mémoire dans l’espace post-soviétique. Cette production, particulièrement significative au tournant des années 2010 (Jones 2024), s’inscrit à la fois dans l’essor global du phénomène de la « post-mémoire » (Hirsch 2012) et dans un cadre politique spécifique, marqué par des tensions croissantes entre la Russie et les autres États issus de la dislocation de l’URSS sur le terrain de l’histoire (Koposov 2018), ainsi que par un durcissement des politiques répressives du régime de Poutine à l’égard de ses opposants.

Sa réflexion se concentre ainsi sur une période au cours de laquelle la mémoire du Goulag revêt une actualité politique significative, soulevant des questions cruciales sur le rapport entre le citoyen et l’État, la Russie et ses voisins. Ce corpus littéraire est considéré, dès lors, comme l’expression de la variété de positions idéologiques qui divisent le débat intellectuel russophone et qui trouvent dans l’histoire des répressions soviétiques un terrain de confrontation majeur. En l’absence d’une sanction judiciaire des violences perpétrées par l’État soviétique et d’une interprétation consensuelle de ces événements, la fiction permet la création d’un espace symbolique où la mise en récit se configure comme une manière de porter un jugement sur le passé.

Sa thèse aborde cette question à travers l’étude de neuf œuvres de fiction publiées entre 2001 et 2019, dans lesquelles l’élaboration d’un jugement rétrospectif est prise en charge par un personnage contemporain à la rédaction du roman : « l’héritier ». Le développement de cette notion – déjà opératoire dans le champ des études mémorielles (Jurgenson & Prstojevic 2012 ; Barjonet 2022 ; Panico 2024) – constitue l’un des enjeux de cette recherche. À travers la figure de l’héritier, ces textes mettent en scène un processus de réinvestissement subjectif du passé, dont il s’agit d’examiner à la fois le déploiement narratif et l’imbrication avec les discours des différents « acteurs mémoriels » (memory actors) (Bogumił 2018) à l’œuvre dans le contexte post-soviétique.

Formation académique :

– Septembre 2022 – En cours : Doctorat en études slaves à Sorbonne Université/Eur’ORBEM, sous la direction d’Hélène Mélat et Luba Jurgenson.

– 15-19 avril 2024 : École de printemps 4EU+ Pluralities of Memory Spring School: Borderlands of Memory, organisée par l’Université Charles de Prague.

– 11-15 juillet 2022 : École d’été 4EU+ Digital Memories: problems, methodologies, theories, organisée par l’Université de Milan.

– 2020-2022 : Master de recherche. Spécialité : Littérature russe. Sorbonne université.

Publications scientifiques (sélection) :

– « Le cinéma en juge de l’histoire ? Le spectre de l’année 1938 dans le film Le capitaine Volkonogov s’est échappé », Revue des Etudes slaves, vol. XCV, n° 4, 2024, p. 565-580.

– « Tchapaev devint un zombie, mais il passait encore à la télé. La littérature russe des années 2000 dans les décombres de l’idéologie soviétique », Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts, n° 14, 2025. En ligne : https://www.peren-revues.fr/figures-historiques/651?lang=en.

– « Zapretnye rukopisi. Arheologija semejnoj pamjati v sovremennoj russkoj literature » [Les manuscrits interdits. Archéologie de la mémoire familiale dans la littérature russe contemporaine], Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, n° 193/3, 2025, pp. 212-227.

Communications (sélection) :

– « D. Bykov, Z. Prilepin: 20 let opravdanij sovetskogo Terrora » [D. Bykov et Z. Prilepine en miroir : 20 ans de justifications des répressions soviétiques]. Colloque international Being a writer under Putin. Inalco, Paris, mars 2025.

– « Echoes of Injustice: Russian-speaking literature coming to terms with the Soviet repressions ». Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne des slavistes. Montréal, juin 2024.

– « Performing the Duty of Memory: Five Time Travel Narratives of the Great Patriotic War ». Colloque international Historical Past and Contemporary Propaganda in the Global Context. Bard College et Smolny Beyond Borders, Berlin, juin 2024.

Expériences d’enseignement (sélection):

– Septembre 2022-mai 2025. Cours « Commentaire littéraire ». TD hebdomadaire destiné aux étudiants en deuxième année de licence LLCER Russe. Sorbonne Université.

– Septembre 2022-Mai 2023. Cours « Auteur, narrateur, personnage ». Séminaire bi-hebdomadaire destiné aux étudiants du Master recherche « Monde russe », spécialité littérature. Sorbonne Université.

Organisation de manifestations scientifiques :

– Avril 2023 – En cours. Cycle de rencontres « L’Observatoire du Sensible » (Sorbonne Université/Eur’Orbem, CREE, Université de Lille) : cycle de rencontres avec des auteurs russophones contemporains, parmi lesquels : Maria Stepanova, Daria Serenko, Galina Rymbu, Sergej Lebedev, Sasha Filipenko.

– 18-20 juin 2025. Conférence du Collettivo Giovani Slavisti. Université de Naples « L’Orientale ».

– 4-7 avril 2023. Colloque Sexe, sexualité, relations sexuelles dans la science-fiction. 11e Colloque international de Stella Incognita. Sorbonne Université (UFR d’études slaves, faculté des Lettres) et de l’École Polytechnique (Département Langues et Cultures et Chaire arts et sciences) ; l’École des Arts Décoratifs – PSL et la Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso ; des laboratoires de recherche Eur’orbem et LinX, du laboratoire junior « Passage » ; de l’Institut d’études slaves et du Cinéma Le St André des Arts.

Autres activités et affiliations :

– Depuis juin 2025. Membre du conseil d’administration de l’Institut d’Études slaves.

– Depuis septembre 2024. Co-coordinateur, avec Sarah Gruszka, du pôle « Histoire, mémoire et arts » du collectif de recherche Coruscant, branche européenne du Russia Program de l’Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) à la George Washington University.

– Depuis septembre 2023. Représentant du Labo Junior « Passage », constitué par les doctorants de l’UMR Eur’ORBEM.

Calls for Papers

CFP | Gender and Mediation

⇒ In German below ⇐

Translational and Editorial Practices in the Reception of Belgian Literature in Czech- and Germanophone Cultural Spaces during Modernism (1870–1940)

 Workshop is organised by Petra James, Hubert Roland, Quintus Immisch di Padua and Martina Mecco, MODERNITAS (MSH – Université Libre de Bruxelles) – UCLouvain and CEFRES – French Research Centre in Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University, Institute of Czech Literature, CAS, Institut of Slovak Literature, SAV.

Deadline for submissions: December 30, 2025
Date: April 15 – 17, 2026
Location: CEFRES, Prague
Languages: English, French, Czech, German
Send an abstract of 300 words to: martina.mecco@ulb.be

(See German below)

The conference is organised as part of the FNRS (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium) project entitled “Belgium ‘Read’ in German and Czech” (2024-2027), directed by Petra James (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Hubert Roland (UCLouvain). Continue reading CFP | Gender and Mediation →

CEFRES Team

Garance Fromont – Research & CV

“Too loud a freedom: emergence of a Cinematographic New Wave in communist Czechoslovakia (1956-1968)”

CEFRES Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices

is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the Cerilac research center (Université Paris Cité), where she is preparing a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Frédérique Berthet. Her research focuses on the conditions that enabled the emergence of a New Wave within the nationalized film industry of 1960s Czechoslovakia. Often regarded as a derivative of the French New Wave that emerged a few years earlier, the specific material, economic, and aesthetic features of the Czechoslovak New Wave remain largely unknown, as do its influences and the dialogues it fostered with the broader landscape of “New Cinemas” that appeared across the world during the same period.

This doctoral project offers an economic, technical, and aesthetic model of this cinematic movement, with a particular focus on its two main hubs: the Barrandov Studios in Prague and the Koliba Studios in Bratislava. Building upon the work of contemporary Czech film historians, the dissertation seeks to demonstrate that this body of inventive films—often seen as visually and even ideologically breaking with the productions of the previous decade—should not be viewed as anomalies in Czechoslovakia’s film history. On the contrary, they are embedded within a consciously adopted national cultural policy. This research adopts a cultural history approach, combining social and political history, production and reception studies, the history of styles and artistic movements, and elements of New Cinema History. It places strong emphasis on archival sources—both institutional and private—that help shed light on these films from the perspective of their creators. Ultimately, the project questions the historical regime of this artistic movement by rethinking and problematizing its periodization.

Publications 
Books 

Cinématérialisms: New materialistic approaches of cinema and audiovisual, Editions Mimesis, 2025, (co-edited with Fanny Cardin, C. E. Harris, Charlie Hewison, Anastasia Rostan and Barnabé Sauvage).

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Thinking a cinema of the Armenian Diaspora (1991-2017), Collection Cinéma(s), L’Harmattan, 2022.
Papers
« By writing, (re)becoming the subject of one’s history, A cross-reading of the personal writings of Pavel Juráček and Daňa Horáková, in communist Czechoslovakia », Ecrire l’Histoire, vol. 25, 2025, forthcoming.
, « Jules Verne’s Cold War: Thinking about contemporary history in two Verne films by Karel Zeman », Conference proceeding Telling History: Narratives and History in Imaginary Cultures, Laboratoire des imaginaires, Wieworka Editions, 2024, pp. 179-202.
 « Translating Transgenerational Trauma into Images – A Comparative Perspective on the Works of Chantal Akerman and Gariné Torossian »,  co-authored with Valentine Auvinet, in Michèle Benhaïm, Nina Faruggia, Vladimir Broda (eds.), Oedipe au cinéma, collection « Psychoanalysis and Social Bond », series, L’Harmattan, 2024.
« Leave no trace, History Live? », Revue d’Histoire Culturelle, n°6, 2023.
 
Conference Papers (selection)
« A speechless cinema: Czechoslovak New Wave and censorship » Doctoral Seminar “Silence !”, Université Paris Cité, April 2025.
Round-table discussion, « Milan Kundera and cinema », with David Čeněk, Mathieu Lericq, Anastasia Mamaeva, Christian Paigneau, Sorbonne university, october 2025.
« From impossible speech to suspicious documents, when the archive invites criticism », Conference « Ten years of Kinétraces association: Archives and cinema », Sorbonne Nouvelle University, november 2023.
« The “Forman Trio”, Individuals and collective work in four Czechoslovak films”, Afeccav Congress, « Collectives, bands and collaborations in cinema and audiovisual », Toulouse Jean Jaurès University, June 2023.
« Comparison of methods » : conference and discussion on research methods with Jeanne Pommeau, Université Paris 8, October 2021.
CEFRES Team, Non classé

Sabina Vassileva – Research & CV

“Gender of metabolism: enacting sexed bodies at the intersection of metabolic and sex hormones”

Research Area 2 – Norms and Transgressions

Contact: sabina.vassileva@soc.cas.cz

Sabina Vassileva is a doctoral candidate at Charles University, Prague. Her PhD dissertation, entitled Gender of metabolism: enacting sexed bodies at the intersection of metabolic and sex hormones contributes to CEFRES research area 2.

My dissertation project draws on the growing recognition that the increasing prevalence of metabolic conditions such as diabetes and obesity is shaped by a complex interplay of biosocial factors. These include (epi)genetics, contemporary food environments saturated with ultra-processed foods, socioeconomic precarity, psychosocial distress, and as I argue gender norms, roles, and relations, including gendered reproductive labor. I am particularly interested in how bodies undergoing hormonal fluctuations face heightened risks of metabolic complications due to the intra-actions between declining estrogen and testosterone levels, glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, insulin sensitivity, microbiome shifts, and gendered norms of care. These dynamics remain underexplored, as biomedical research has historically privileged stabilized (male) bodies in clinical trials and research design.

In my dissertation, I explore how biosocial gendered relations shape metabolic health and diagnoses such as diabetes and obesity. I examine how gender is enacted in metabolic health along three axes: self-care practices, clinical care, and biomedical research. My focus is on the hormonal intra-actions between metabolic and sex steroid hormones. I draw on a Baradian material-semiotic framework and build on critical feminist anthropology of hormones, which has foregrounded how hormones not only carry gendered imaginaries but also function as technoscientific tools of sex regulation and bodily governance. While sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone are often studied in isolation, their intra-actions with metabolic hormones like insulin or glucagon-like peptides remain largely sidelined in sociological research. To address this gap my work combines feminist anthropology of hormones with the notion of postindustrial metabolism that enables me to trace the mutual constitutions of gender and metabolism.

Methodologically, my PhD adopts a mixed-methods approach. I combine qualitative ethnography (semi-structured interviews and participant observation)—exploring embodied experiences and everyday practices of “doing metabolism” and “doing gender”—with critical discourse analysis of biomedical research on metabolism. My ethnographic partners include people with diabetes or obesity who undergo synthetic hormonal therapies: individuals navigating menopause, andropause, or gender-affirming hormone treatments. These bodily transitions are critical sites where gendered and metabolic regulation is negotiated. Through this research, I investigate how gendered metabolic norms are not only discursively repeated but also materially metabolized—becoming embedded in the design of metabolic technologies and medications used in care. For this purpose I use visual ethnography tools like hormonal mapping.

By tracing how gender is materially metabolized in bodies, care practices, and biomedical knowledge, my project offers a feminist rethinking of metabolism as a deeply gendered and politically regulated process. By focusing on hormonal intra-actions, the project foregrounds fluid and dynamic bodily processes and gives voice to bodies that are marginalized in biomedical research on metabolism and whose mutual shaping of sexed embodiments and living in gendered social relations is not sufficiently considered.

CV

Education

  • from 2024 till present: PhD student, Sociology, Prague.
  • 2021-2024: MA, Anthropology, Charles University, Prague
  • 2017-2021: BA, Philosophy, Charles University, Prague.

Participation in research projects

  • Since 2024: PhD-participant Technocultures of extended metabolism, [GA24-12497S], project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
  • Since 2025: Junior researcher, Strategie AV21: Umělá inteligence pro vědu a společnost, Využití AI při managementu diabetu 1. typu, project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
  • Since 2025: Junior researcher, Platform workers on the czech labour market, project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences

Recent academic activities (selected)

  • June 2025: “Looped in within algorithms: A biosocial case study of a diabetic living with artificial pancreas,” paper presented at STS nordic conference, Stockholm, Sweden
  • June 2025: “Unwriting design injustice: hormonal-algorithmic tinkering
  • with open-source diabetes care technology,” paper presented at SIEF conference, Aberdeen, UK
  • May, 2025: “Attending to risky attachments: a study of a DIY loop for diabetes care, paper presented at an academic workshop “STS concepts for the life as aftermath”, Munich, Germany
  • March, 2025: “Queer metabolism: de/stabilizations of sex and gender binaries in biomedical research on gender affirming care and metabolism”, paper presented at STS HUB conference, Berlin, Germany
  • November, 2024: “Opening the black box of algorithms,” invited lecture within undergraduate course “Společnost, technologie, tělenost,” Faculty of humanities, Charles University, Prague
  • July, 2024: “Digital interfaces, real inequalities: exploring algorhitmic opacity in the platformised Czech delivery sector,” paper presented at EASA conference, Barcelona, Spain.
  • July, 2024: “Chrononormativita z perspektivy genderu a politiky těla, “ invited lecture at Woods sympozium “Time at the tips of conifers”, Orlické mountains, Czech republic
  • June, 2024: “More than Numbers: Health, Digitalization, and Bioethnography,” paper presented at the 15th MAYS Annual Meeting, Bologna, Italy.

Recent publications

  • Borisova V., Vassileva S. 2025. „Caring for more-than-human metabolic health: Self-tracking technologies as tools of calculation and communication in obesity and type 1 diabetes care“. Archivio antropologico mediterraneo. 27 (1). http://journals.openedition.org/aam/10112

Canovas O, Conan L, Gille P, Martinez A, Miranda CK, Palmea K, Roubi T, Suarez M, Vassileva S & Aline Wiame, 2024. « La nature en guerre contre la vie. Une expérimentation d’écriture cyborg entre Guattari et Haraway », Sextant, 41. http://journals.openedition.org/sextant/11409

Non classé

Markus Pollak – Research & CV

“Evaluating Democracies: International Election Observers and the Contestation of Liberal Ordering”

Axes de recherche 1 : Déplacements, dépaysements et décalages : hommes, savoirs et pratiques & 2 : Normes et transgressions

I am a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at Central European University and a DOC-Fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. My research focuses on international election observers in the post-Cold War era. Specifically, I examine practices of contestation facing observation missions sent out by regional organizations. As a key pillar of democracy promotion and liberal international ordering, election observation provides an entry point for understanding contemporary endogenous and exogenous challenges to liberal international ordering.

My project is embedded in the subfield of international political sociology. To collect data, I combine interviews with election observation practitioners and intergovernmental organization staff with archival research, particularly at the OSCE archives in Prague. In line with a Bourdieu-inspired research methodology, my project emphasizes participant observation. I have worked as a OSCE and EU election observer in Bolivia, the United States, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Serbia. I am also a research associate at the NGO Election-Watch.EU.

Currently I work on a research project investigating OSCE election observer careers and the recruitment practices of OSCE missions. Previously, I conducted research on parallel election observation missions and published an article on the election observation missions of the Commonwealth of Independent States in the OSCE region.

Education

  • PhD in International Relations, Central European University (ongoing)
  • MA in International Relations, Central European University
  • Certificate of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sciences Po Paris
  • BA and MA in Political Science, University of Vienna

Selected Publications

Pollak, M. (2025). Mimicking Election Observation: The Politics of Parallel Election Monitoring. Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy.

Teaching experience

2025-2026: Lecturer at the University of Vienna for the course “Politics of Democratization and Autocratization”

2025: Teaching Assistant at Central European University for the courses “International Intervention and Statebuilding” and “Introduction to International Relations”, Vienna

Conferences and Public Presentations

  • European International Studies Association (EISA) – 2025 Pan-European Conference on International Relations (“It´s a small world! For 20 years it´s often been the same people”)
  • Electoral Integrity Conference (EIP) – 2023 (“Mimicking Election Observation”) + 2025 (“It´s a small world! For 20 years it´s often been the same people”)
  • University of Vienna – “The Subversion of Liberal Election Observation?”, presentation at the Marie Jahoda Summer School 2024 (July 2024).
  • University of Oxford – “Mimicking Election Observation”, presentation was a part of the programme of the Europaeum Oxford Spring School 2024, St Antony´s college (April 2024).
  • Sciences Po Paris – “Mimicking Election Observation”, guest speaker at an event of the CERI VERELECT research group (November 2024)
  • Central European University – Pollak, M.“´Being an observer is not a profession – although everyone thinks it is”, guest speaker at the Conflict and Security Research group (March 2025)