CEFRES Team

Ségolène Plyer: Research & CV

Eastern Bohemia in the First Globalization (1870s-1940s)

Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies.

Contact: s.plyer@cefres.cz

PlyerMy research focuses on Eastern Bohemia from the 1870s to the 1940s. Despite its fringe position at the Silesian border, between the Elbe and Moravia, this territory developed the most modern textile industry within the Double Monarchy and fully integrated the circuits of global exchanges of the end of 19th century. At the same time, Eastern Bohemia’s society experienced violent clashes between its Czech- and German-speaking populations. The expulsions of Germans in 1945-1946 put an end to a period tainted with globalization, democratization and nationalist drifts.

According to the available sources, the local society was organized within networks of information, business and sociabilities (as evidenced by the matrimonial alliances contracted between textile business families,  the pendular migrations of workers down to Silesia, and the circulation of local papers). These networks more or less fit the same regional geographical borders.

My aim is to study how such networks – and through them, local actors – would make use of the various spatial scales as ressources or as ways to escape in time of crisis. The efforts undertaken by some to impose a mainstream action – in order to integrate parochial conflicts into larger national politics for instance, or as they assimilated the national goals for their own local purposes, or as they chose to emigrate overseas – shall be scrutinized as they met growing nationalist discourses. Such analysis should provide a better understanding of how multiculturality was managed in a regional frame in the context of this first globalization.

CV

Current Situation

Since 2010, assistant professor at the Strasbourg University.

Education and professional career

2007: PhD at the Sorbonne Panthéon (Paris I) University, under the supervision of Robert Frank and Étienne François, cum summa laude.
Dissertation title: Germans from Sudeten and from Germany: Group Identity Mutations (The Case of Braunau/Broumov in Bohemia).

1995: received at “agrégation” national competitive examination in history (national recruitment examination for high-school/university professors).

Teaching

Since 2010: courses preparing to the national recruitment examination for high-school/university professors; courses in BA and MA; seminars for PhD students, at the Strasbourg University.

2014-2015: co-organization of two trinational summer schools “Gathered within Diversity?” with the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Bonn, Paris-Sorbonne University, Warsaw and Wrocław University, Bonn 2014, Strasbourg 2015. Course given in 2015: “Cities”. Courses given in 2014: “Informationsgesellschaft” and “Migration und Grenzen”.

2002-2008: high-school teacher within the Versailles academy.

Affiliations

  • Member of the research center EA 3400 (Faculty of history, Strabourg University).
  • Member of the CNRS research group no. 3607  « Connaissance de l’Europe médiane ».
  • Member of the peer-review committe of Revue d’Allemagne.
  • Partner researcher of the UMR SIRICE-Sorbonne research center “European Identities,  International Relations and Civilizations”.

Last Publications

  • « Récits de vie et expulsion : l’exemple des Allemands des Sudètes », in Dominique Herbet et Caroline Hähnel-Mesnard (dir.), Fuite et expulsion des Allemands : transnationalité et représentations, XXe-XXIe siècle, Lille, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2015, p. 367-388.
  • « Restaurer la sensibilité au paysage. Deux mouvements de patrimonialisation aux confins de la Bohême pendant la seconde moitié du XXe siècle », Revue d’Allemagne, t. 47, n° 2, 2015, p. 151-168.
  • « Expulsion, grands récits nationaux et petits récits européens. Mémoires individuelles et construction des communautés en Europe centrale depuis 1945 », Source(s). Cahiers de l’équipe de recherche ARCHE, n°4, juin 2014.
  • Notices : “Charte 77”, “Luxembourg (Rosa)”, “Spartakisme”, “Mur de Berlin”, “Rideau de fer”, “Contraception (et avortement)”, “Féminisme et mouvements féministes”, “J’écris ton nom Liberté”, dans : Georges Bischoff et Nicolas Bourguinat (dir.), Dictionnaire historique de la liberté, Nouveau monde éditions, 2015.

You can see Ségolène Plyer’s full list of publications here.