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European Conference on African Studies

When: June 25-28, 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.

European Conference on African Studies

When: June 25-28, 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.

Conference | Central Europe and Francophone Africa in the aftermath of the Second World War: Crossroads

To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the Centre universitaire francophone of the University of Szeged, in partnership with the Regional Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Modern History and Mediterranean Studies of the University of Szeged, is organising a conference entitled ‘Central Europe and Francophone Africa in the aftermath of the Second World War: crossroads’.

This event has been created in partnership with the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences – Prague (CEFRES) and the French Institute in Hungary.

When: May 19 and 20, 2025
Where: Regional Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Szeged

READ THE FULL PROGRAM HERE

Argumentary

This conference aims to interrogate post-history in two distinct regions that, at first glance, appear to share little in common, maintaining only distant relationships. However, when the fighting ended, both regions—considered peripherical—and their respective nations and populations experienced, simultaneously, an ambiguous and debatable liberation. With this paradox in mind, the conference seeks to highlight the inherent issues present in both regions within the broader perspective of the post–World War recomposition of the world, from which neither the European nor the African continent was exempt. The year 1945 marked the end of the dominance of traditional European powers and laid the foundations of the bipolar world order. These transformations had numerous repercussions for these regions, situated at the center of the superpowers’ geopolitical chessboard.

Taking a comparative approach, this conference positions itself as an open window into exploring the inherent or shared dynamics between Central Europe and Francophone Africa from the very end of hostilities onward. It also aims to describe the profound transformations, without losing sight of the fact that, although the year 1946 marked a rupture and a new beginning, it also belonged to the continuity of the old world.

Hence, the conference seeks to offer a space for reflection and dialogue between specialists of both regions—PhD students, early-career researchers, lecturers, and established scholars alike—to better understand the impact of the end of the Second World War on the contemporary history of Francophone Africa and Central Europe. The key perspectives proposed for discussion include:

  • Central Europe at the end of the Second World War
  • France and Central Europe from 1940 to 1950
  • Francophone Africa in 1945
  • The decolonization movements
  • Gaullism and Africa

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 / Charles University)
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.

Conference | Transnationalism, Activism and Solidarity

Romani Racialization Beyond Majority-Minority Narratives

When: 21–23 May 2025
Where: Vila Lanna, Institute of Czech Literature, CEFRES

CEFRES is hosting the closing round table on the 23rd of June at 5 PM.

Convenors: Tina MAGAZZINI and Martin FOTTA (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences)

The conference is open to the public, but registration is required due to limited capacity.

📝 Register here: https://forms.office.com/e/HGQ7SNK2Rq
📄 The full programme is available for download as a PDF here. Continue reading Conference | Transnationalism, Activism and Solidarity →

Book World Prague 2025 | Meet Ruth Zylberman

Discover this powerful novel about the fate of the inhabitants of a Parisian house in the 1940s.

When: May 17, 2025, 4 PM
Where: Milan Kunderas’ Hall, Výstaviště Praha Holešovice, Křižíkovy pavilony

The event is organised in cooperation with French Institute in Prague and Maraton Editions.
Join us at the Book World Prague 2025 for a discussion with writer and director Ruth Zylberman, who will be talking about her novel 209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe: Autobiographie d’un immeuble (Points, 2021), of which the Czech translation was published by Editions Maraton in 2024. Ruth Zylberman’s narrative brings to life the stories of those who disappeared and those who survived, children and adults, collaborators and resistance fighters, young girls in love and women with sulphurous reputations, people of different nationalities whose destinies were brought together by the same Parisian address. The discussion will be followed by a book signing.
Ruth Zylberman, a French director and writer, has made several documentaries and published her first novel, La Direction de l’absent, in 2015. Her work reflects a deep interest in the history of Central Europe: her documentary Dissidents, les artisans de la liberté (2009) is devoted to Václav Havel, among others, while Le Procès – Prague 1952 (2021) traces the fate of three convicts: Rudolf Slánský, Artur London and Rudolf Margolius. In 2018, she directed the documentary Les Enfants du 209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe, which served as the basis for her novel published in 2020. Both the film and the book have been enthusiastically received by audiences and specialists alike.