European Conference on African Studies

When: 25–28 June 2025
Where: Prague
Organizers: Czech Association for African Studies & European African Studies Association

AEGIS organises the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) every second year, in a different European city, convened by one or more AEGIS members. It has become the largest global African Studies gathering, growing exponentially every year and attracting scholars from across Europe, Africa and the world. 

CEFRES is a proud partner of this international conference which is is for the first time in its history located in one of the post-communist Visegrad countries – in the Czech Republic, known as the heart of Europe.

The 20th anniversary of ECAS will give us a great opportunity to look retrospectively at African studies in Europe, and more generally over the past two decades, while also providing new insights into the future development in the field. We will do our best to design a challenging programme of keynote speakers, plenary and roundtable sessions, film screenings, book displays focusing on African studies, and cultural and artistic events.

See the full program of the conference here.

Grand Entretien | The World of Wiliam Marx

To Live in a Library of Five Dimensions

Date: June 11, 2025, 18 h
Location: French Institute in Prague, Štěpánská 35, Praha 1
The event will be held in French with simultaneous translation into Czech.

Where does the hostility towards literature come from, and what are the roots of its growing devaluation? How can we enrich our readings by taking a decentralised look at the texts? To what extent can a perspective from afar shed new light on our understanding of the Greek tragedies? And with what far-reaching arguments has Pope Francis put an end to a long history of scathing indictments of literary texts?

As part of the ‘Grands entretiens avec…’ series, this event is organised by CEFRES and its Platform partners in collaboration with the French Institute in Prague. Continue reading Grand Entretien | The World of Wiliam Marx

Neo-Avant-Gardes: Serving or Opposing Historical Narratives?

10th session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.

Location: CEFRES Library and online (to get the link, write to cefres[@]cefres.cz)
Date: 
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 at 4:30 pm
Language: 
English

Speaker: Honorata Sroka (CEFRES / National Science Centre, Poland)
Chair: Hélène Martinelli (CEFRES / École Normale Supérieure de Lyon)

Text to be read: Peter Bürger (1974). Theory of the Avant-Garde. Translation Michael Shaw. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Abstract:

The presentation will take the form of very preliminary remarks related to my post-doctoral research, which I have been conducting for 7 months at the French Research Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences. My project develops the same line of research as my doctoral thesis, however, approaches the issue in a broader way. Specifically, using selected examples of neo-avant-gardes in Central and Eastern Europe, I hope to show how and why artists decided to create subversive forms of historiography and what kind of experimental strategies can be found in archives. Employing the methodology so-called “cultural history of the avant-gardes”, I will reflect on vanguard institutions and practices oriented towards a self-historiography. What I dare to claim one can essentially call a discussion on Peter Bürger’s pivotal book Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974). He was the one who argued that the avant-gardes stood against institutions. In contrast to his assumption, my research aims to display how neo-avant-gardes in Central and Eastern Europe developed rather than destroyed art institutions, as well as subversive forms of historiography, and why these two were intertwined.

Please find the complete program of 2024–2025 seminar here.

Transatlantic Crossings

Polish Communities in France and in the United States after WW2 and their Political Practices

9th session of CEFRES in-house seminar
Through the presentation of works in progress, CEFRES’s Seminar aims at raising and discussing issues about methods, approaches or concepts, in a multidisciplinary spirit, allowing everyone to confront her or his own perspectives with the research presented.

Location: CEFRES Library and online (to get the link, write to cefres[@]cefres.cz)
Date: 
Tuesday, May 27, 2025 at 4:30 pm
Language: 
English

Speaker: Florence Vychytil-Baudoux (EHESS / CEFRES)
Chair: tba

Text to be read: Michael Werner & Bénédicte Zimmermann, « Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity », History and Theory, 2006, vol. 45, no 1, p. 30‑50.

Abstract:

Between the 1880s and the 1930s, over 12 million people left Polish territories “za chlebem” (for bread). While before WW1 the United States attracted most Polish peasants looking for a better future, it was France that became the main destination for Polish migrants in the interwar period. Continue reading Transatlantic Crossings

Energy and its Renewed Cartography

Eighth session of the 2024-2025 CEFRES Francophone
Interdisciplinary Seminar The Map and the Border
In 2023 we started questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory). In short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, we began inquiring into the question of the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Date: Friday May 23, 2025, from 10 am
Language: French

Speaker: Gilles LEPESANT (CEFRES / CNRS)
Discussant: Barbora Kvasničková (Research fellow at AMO – Association for International Affairs)

Abstract Continue reading Energy and its Renewed Cartography