A Subaltern That Sings:
From Sound Resistance to Musical Diplomacy in Wartime Ukraine

CEFRES Research Area 1: Displacements, “dépaysements” & discrepancies

Contact: valeriya.korablyova[@]fsv.cuni.cz

Dr Valeria Korablyova is a sociologist and political theorist working on post-Soviet transformations in Ukraine and the region, with the research focus on performative politics and entangled imperial/colonial legacies. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Russian and East European Studies and the Leader of the Research Centre “Ukraine in a Changing Europe” at the Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. Dr Korablyova received her habilitation (D. of Sc. degree) in 2015 from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, with the book Social Meanings of Ideology (Kyiv University, 2014) that covers transformations of the European modernity, where the ethos of solidarity underpinning the Maidan uprising stands as a specific case in point. She has held fellowships and visiting professorships at Stanford University, the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, the University of Basel, Justus Liebig University Giessen, and other institutions. Most recently, she has presented on broader implications of the Russian war of aggression for European political imaginary and structures of knowledge production. Her latest publications on the matter include: “Fighting Russia’s ‘Dark Power’: The ‘Bright Power’ of Enacted Values” in Putin’s Europe. Russian Influence in European Democracy (European Liberal Forum, 2023); ‘Why Is Ukraine Important? Challenging the colonial and Cold War legacies in European social sciences’ in Soziologie (vol. 52, no. 3, 2023); ‘Russia vs. Ukraine: A Subaltern Empire Against The “Populism of Hope”’ in Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Studia Territorialia (# 2 2022); and editing the special Topos issue “Transformations of Society and Academia in the Wake of the Russian War in Ukraine: Urgent Notes” (#2 2022). 

Continue reading Valeria Korablyova – Research & CV →

A Subaltern That Sings:
From Sound Resistance to Musical Diplomacy in Wartime Ukraine

Research Area 1: Displacements, “dépaysements” and discrepancies

Contact: louisa.martin-chevalier(@)sorbonne-universite.fr

Louisa Martin-Chevalier is associate professor at Sorbonne University (Musicology Department), where she teaches music history and the analysis of twentieth-century works, as well as thematic courses such as “music and politics” and “musical creation in Eastern Europe”. Her current research extends the work she began on her doctoral thesis on the Soviet avant-garde composer Nikolay Roslavets. It provides keys to understanding contemporary artistic creation in Eastern Europe. She co-created the “Building Relationships in a Changing World – European Musicological Seminar” and the innovative action-research seminar “Forming a collective without a leader”. She is co-director of the ‘Institutional and Social Frameworks’ research team at IReMus and coeditor of the journal Filigrane. Musique, esthétique, science, société. She is initiating a wideranging research programme to examine the impact of exile on women’s artistic creation.  Continue reading Louisa Martin-Chevalier – Research & CV →

Sapphic Modernism in Central and Eastern Europe:
Cultural Transfers and Intersections (1848–1933)

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: anna.dzabagina(@)uw.edu.pl

Anna Dżabagina is a literary historian primarily interested in XIXth and early XXth century Central and Eastern European literature, with the core focus on women’s writings, queer literature, and transnational modernist networks. She holds a Ph.D. in literary studies from the University of Warsaw (2019), where she defended a thesis on Polish-German modernist writer Eleonora Kalkowska (1883–1937), investigated through the lenses of transnational modernism studies, exile studies, and locational feminism. Between 2015–2023 she taught courses on the history of Polish literature and Literary Theory in the curricula of bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Faculty of Polish Studies (University of Warsaw) and a series of author seminars on modernist queer women’s writings (Open University and Postgraduate School of Gender Studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences). Her current research examines sapphic modernism – a new literary language to express nonheteronormative experiences, desires, and identities – in women’s writings from the territories of the Russian Empire (particularly in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian literature). She is also working on the first queer biography of Narcyza Żmichowska (1819–1878).  Continue reading Anna Dżabagina – Research & CV →

Contested energy transitions.
Conflicts and Social innovations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France

CEFRES Research Area 2 : Norms and transgressions

Contact : martin.durdovic[@]soc.cas.cz

Martin Durdovic is a research scholar at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, specializing in energy social research. His current research interests center around social aspects of nuclear energy and nuclear waste management on the one hand and sustainable energy transitions on the other. His research relies on both qualitative and quantitative approaches, such as narrative analysis, stakeholder interaction analysis, public opinion surveys, and other, and also involves engagement with sociological theory and meta-theory. Martin Durdovic is a laureate of the 2020 Czech Sociological Association biennial award for the best sociological book (Narrative and Dialogue. The Theory of Social Intersubjectivity) and a member of various expert bodies and associations. In the 2021-2022 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in California. Since February 2024, he coordinates with Gilles Lepesant, the senior research fellow at CNRS – National Center for Scientific Research, Géographie-Cités, a two-year incubation project supported within the Tandem program and entitled: “Contested energy transitions. Conflicts and social innovations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France”. More information about Martin Durdovic is available here: https://www.soc.cas.cz/en/lide/martin-durdovic

Recent publications

• Durdovic, Martin. 2023. „Counter-strategizing after a dialogue failure: Stakeholder involvement and nuclear waste disposal in the Czech Republic.“ Energy Research & Social Science 103: 103198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103198
• Durdovic, Martin. 2022. „Emergent Consequences of Narrating Futures in Energy Transitions.“ Futures 138: 102930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2022.102930
• Durdovic, Martin. 2022. „ A Morphogenetic Approach to Social Aspects of Energy: The Case of Coal.“ Pp. 37-55 in Iwińska, Katarzyna & Bukowska, Xymena (eds.). Gender and Energy Transition. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78416-4
• Durdovic, Martin. 2022. „The Transformation of Order in Narrative as Discordant Concord: Using Paul Ricoeur to Explore Narrative Realism as Part of Social Morphogenesis.“ Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 52 (2): 260-278.  https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12319

Contested energy transitions.
Conflicts and social innovations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France

CEFRES Research Area 2: Norms and Transgressions

Contact : gilles.lepesant[@]cnrs.fr

His research focuses on the transformations in the geography of energy induced by the increasing role played by renewables. The research covers the strategies deployed at the European Union level as well as at the national level (particularly in Germany and in Central Europe) and at the local and regional level. The main research areas are the EU energy-climate policy, the spatial implications of its implementation and the challenges linked to the deployment of renewable energies (permitting, social acceptance, consistency with ESG principles). Taking into account the strong inertia in energy systems, the objective is to investigate the historical, political and technical factors that accelerate or inhibit the deployment of renewable energies and to contribute to the empirical and theoretical literature related to this field.

At CEFRES, he is coordinating with Martin Ďurďovič (Senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences) the Tandem project “Contested energy transitions. Conflicts and social innovations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France”.

This project takes place in the context of an energy transition enshrined into the “Green Deal” whose aim is to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The research carried out aims at identifying tensions and conflicts linked to the energy transition, to highlight the perceptions of the different stakeholders and to investigate the innovations deployed to overcome constraints and challenges. The project covers four countries: Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and France as well as a set of cities and regions within these countries.

Publications (selection)

• Gilles Lepesant (2024), « Entre défis de sécurité et ambitions climatiques, l’affirmation d’une Union européenne de l’énergie », L’Information géographique, Janvier.
• Gilles Lepesant (2024), « Adapting coastal areas to sea-level rise in Netherlands and in France. Between hard protections, nature-based solutions and managed retreat », Special issue : « Grassroot innovations in climate action : unpacking cooperations and conflicts in multilevel governance ». Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, Février.
• Gilles Lepesant, (2023), “Higher Renewable Energy Targets in Germany. How Will the Industry Benefit?”, Briefings de l’Ifri, Ifri, January 6.
• Gilles Lepesant (2022), Géographies des énergies, l’Europe dans le nouvel équilibre mondial, Éditions Hermann, Paris.
• Gilles Lepesant (2022), « Vers une transition énergétique allemande adossée aux énergies renouvelables et au gaz ? », Allemagne d’aujourd’hui, n°239.