Archives

Biopolitics, Space and Bureaucratic Knowledge in the 20th Century

VIth Session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

Biopolitics, Space and Bureaucratic Knowledge in the Twentieth Century: Perspectives from East Central Europe

When: Wednesday 8th December 2021, 4:30 pm
Where: At CEFRES and online (to register please contact claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English
Hosts:
Nikola Ludlová, Vojtěch Pojar
both PhD candidates at CEU and fellow at CEFRES

Our session consists of two presentations on biopolitics in East Central Europe. We focus on scientific knowledge and the agency of experts and bureaucracies in producing and circulating it. On the face of it, our presentations may seem disparate, as they focus on different scientific disciplines – demography and eugenics, respectively – and on different parts of the twentieth century. Our presentations, however, rest on three shared assumptions informed by the history of science. We would like to spell them out here.

Continue reading Biopolitics, Space and Bureaucratic Knowledge in the 20th Century →

Visual Sources in the Historian’s Studio. Solidarność through Films and Photographs

Vth Session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

Visual Sources in the Historian’s Studio. Solidarność through Films and Photographs

When: Wednesday 1st December 2021, 4:30 pm
Where: At CEFRES and online (to register please contact claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English
Host:

Ania Szczepanska, Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne University (lab. HICSA),  documentary filmmaker

Having been exploring the Polish archives of the communist era, Ania Szczepanska published a book on cinema as a critical response to the regime in Poland in the 1970s. Her first documentary, Nous filmons le peuple ! [We Film the People!] (Abacaris, Les films de l’Air, Ciné +), is dedicated to the conflicts between the communist power and artists, more precisely around the filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. This documentary film was selected in competition in 2013 at the International History Film Festival (Festival international du film d’Histoire) and was awarded an Étoile (star) by the Scam (Civil Society of Multimedia authors). Moreover, she also directed Solidarność, la chute du mur commence en Pologne [Sollidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe] (Looksfilm, 2019) which was broadcasted on Arte on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

As author of numerous articles, she has also cowritten, together with Sylvie Lindeperg, a book devoted to audiovisual archives A qui appartiennent les images ? [To Whom Do the Images Belong?] (Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2017). Her latest book, entitled Une histoire visuelle de Solidarność [A Visual History of Solidarność]  (Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2021), addresses the history of the Solidarność movement through elaborate visual traces on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Is Academic Freedom a Freedom of All?

CEFRES 30th Anniversary International Conference (Part 2), Prague, 25–26 November 2021

Venue: Prague, Carolinum, Ovocný trh 3, and online on CEFRES Facebook page and on Zoom
Date: 25–26 November 2021

Academic freedom is weakened and even challenged in many countries by various political, economic and religious powers. The indifference of the population for a freedom often perceived as a caste privilege aggravates this situation. It is therefore urgent to make academic freedom a public good that concerns all members of a society.

After a first part held last May, CEFRES is organising the second part of its 30th anniversary international conference on 25–26 November 2021 in Prague, together with its CEFRES Platform partners, Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences. The conference will be held at the Carolinum of Charles University and simultaneously online.

Download the presentation of the participants here!
Program 
Thursday, 25 November 2021

4:30–6:30 pm (English)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85931944473

Welcome speeches
  • Lenka Rovná, Vice-Rector of Charles University
  • Alexis Dutertre, Ambassador of France in Czech Republic (to be confirmed)
  • Ondřej Beránek, Vice-President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, responsible for Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Jérôme Heurtaux, Director of CEFRES

Film Screening: Science in Exile, by Pierre-Jérôme Adjedj and Pascale Laborier, 2020 (8’).

Round-Table: Is academic freedom a freedom of all?

Moderator: Pascale Laborier, Professor at University of Nanterre, Vice-President of Paris-Lumières University

  • Jiří Přibáň, Professor at Cardiff University
  • Pierre-Jérôme Adjedj, Photographer and Video Artist
  • Dilnur Reyhan, President of European Uyghur Institute
  • Olga Golubko, Emergency Program Manager at the Education Office for the New Belarus
  • Michal Vašečka, Program Director of Bratislava Policy Institute

Cocktail

Friday 26 November 2021

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81879262389

Scholars and institutions facing powers

9:30–11:15 (English)

Moderator: Alena Marková, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University

  • Gábor Egry, Director of the Institute of Political History, Budapest The silence of the lambs? Cooptation, exclusion, rewarding: Means of creating a silenced academia in Hungary
  •  Piotr Forecki, Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
    History on trial. The attack on Holocaust researchers in Poland 
  • Shamil Jeppie, Associate Professor at University of Cape Town Freedom and ethics in the academy
  • Cherine Hussein, Senior Researcher at the Institute of International Relations, Prague                                                        Resistance Movements, Scholar-Activism and the Question of Solidarity

Coffee Break

Does New Public Management challenge scientific freedom?

11:30–13:00 (English)

Moderator: Mitchell Young, Assistant Professor, Institute of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University

  • Tereza Stöckelová, Researcher at the Institute of sociology of Czech Academy of Sciences
    Why academic freedom must be challenged
  • Michael Komm, Michaela Vojtková et Lukáš Dvořáček, Věda žije!
    When scientists are not playing fair and how to deal with it
  • Frédéric Sawicki, Professor of political science, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University                                                                                              The perverse effects of the managerial turn: The French experience

 Lunch

How to defend and protect academic freedom?

14:15–16:00 (French and English, with live translation)

Moderator: Jakob Vogel, Director of Marc Bloch Center, Berlin

  • Catherine Gousseff, Senior researcher at CNRS                                The exceptional welcome of the Russian academic exile in Prague (1920–1939): State policy and benefits of experiences
  • Pascale Laborier, Vice-President of Paris-Lumières University, Co-Founder of PAUSE                                                                                        Some lessons on hosting researchers in exile abroad
  •  Habib Mellakh, President of the Association tunisienne de défense des valeurs universitaires (ATDVU)                                              Challenging and defending academic freedom: The Tunisian experience
  • Béatrice Hibou, Senior researcher at CNRS – CERI-Sciences Po, Paris
    Some lessons from the support to Fariba Adelkhah, scientific prisoner in Iran

  Coffee Break

What to do? How to do?

16:30–18:00 (French and English, with live translation)

Moderator: Jérôme Heurtaux, Director of CEFRES

All Participants and, among others, Katia Boissevain, Director of IRMC (Tunis), Pierre Buhler, CAPS-MEAE, Adrien Delmas, Director of the Jacques Berque Center (Rabat), Adrien Fauve, Director of IFEAC (Bichkek), Anaïs Marin, Researcher at CCFEF, Warsaw and Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, etc.

Download the presentation of the participants here!

Facebooktwitterlinkedin

 

 

Digital Games as Representations of the Past: The Central European Context

4th session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

Digital Games as Representations of the Past: The Central European Context

Hosted by:
Jan Kremer, Phd-fellow at CEFRES and at the Faculty of Education, Charles University

When: November 10th, 2021 at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES and online (to register please mail to claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English

Jan Kremer will present historical game studies as a part of a broader field of public history. The paper will deal with historical games as a fluid research subject, it will introduce main analytical methods and strategies. Jan Kremer as a medievalist writing his PhD thesis on digital medievalism will further examine ludic representations of the Middle Ages focusing on Central European digital games production in the context of regional historical culture.

Urban Movements and Local Politics in CEE countries: Recent Developments and Conceptual Ambivalences

International Workshop organized by the CEFRES, in cooperation with the Institute of Sociological Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague).

Date: 4–6 November 2021
Place: CEFRES, Prague and online (for the access, please contact: claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English

Program

Thursday, 4 November

17:30 Welcome speech

18:00 – 19:00 Keynote: Agnes Gagyi, University of Gothenburg, Housing struggles in Eastern Europe as a structural field of contention

19:00 Cocktails

Friday, 5 November

9:30 – 11:00 Housing crisis: Alternative housing and resisting actors 

Zsuzsanna Pósfai, Periféria Policy and Research Center, Potential financial mechanisms for new forms of affordable housing

Yuliya Moskvina, Ludmila Böhmova,  Charles University in Prague, Jakub Černý, University of Ostrava, Písnice as a space of resistance to privatization

Jakub Černý, University of Ostrava, Processes of (collective) resistence in the context of residential displacement in Czechia: Case study „Bedřiška”

Chair: Yoann Morvan (CNRS)

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 – 13:00 Urban initiatives and movements 

Alexandra Bitušíková, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Not in our town: Urban activism in Slovakia (The case of Banská Bystrica)

Justyna Kościńska, University of Warsaw, Theorizing urban movements in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms of capital and habitus

Klemen Ploštajner, University of Ljubljana, Between political and post-political: Two urban movements in Ljubljana

Chair: Ronan Hervouet (CEFRES / CNRS / Bordeaux University)

13:00 – 14:30 Lunch break

14:30 – 16:00 Institutional formations in the cities: neoliberalism and beyond 

Michaela Pixová, Charles University in Prague, Governance of crises in crisis: Dialogue, cooperation and radical forms of democracy as a way of overcoming inaction

Václav Orcígr, Charles University in Prague, Recent development and planning in Prague – NGO perspective

Pavel Šuška, Slovak Academy of Sciences, From Local ideology to tactical urbanism and strategic integration: Changing place-frames within urban political landscape of post-socialist Bratislava

Svetlana Moskaleva, European University at St.Petersburg,  Institutionalization of urban planning in post-soviet Russia

Chair: Yuliya Moskvina (UK)

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 – 17:30 Spatial practices 

Lýdia Grešáková, Zuzana Tabačková, Spolka, Spatial practices from the margins

Adela Petrovic, Greta Kukeli, Charles University in Prague, From a former industrial neighborhood to a creative-class oasis: A case study of Karlín, the inner-city neighborhood of Prague

Chair: Václav Orcígr (UK)

Saturday, 6 November

10:00 Critical urban tour at Karlín district with Jakub Nakládal (meeting at CEFRES)

For more information, see the call for papers: here.

What Did the Typewriter Do to Banking? Bureaucratic Practices, Materiality, and the Logic of Capitalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

3rd session of CEFRES Seminar 2021-2022

What Did the Typewriter Do to Banking?
Bureaucratic Practices, Materiality, and the Logic of Capitalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Hosted by:
Mátyás Erdélyi, post-doctoral fellow at CEFRES and Charles University

When: November 3rd, 2021 at 4:30 pm
Where: CEFRES and online (to register please mail to claire(@)cefres.cz)
Language: English

Abstract
In this talk, I present my current research project that focuses on bureaucratic practices in banking at the turn of the century from the perspective of the materiality of office work. The project reconstructs the emergence of the modern bureau by relating the “grubby details” of office work to the multi-faceted identity of functionaires. Based on the case study of several savings banks in the Dual Monarchy, it studies how the logic of capitalism materialized and was embodied in different forms, how bureaucratic practices were implanted in the body and hands of clerks, and what exactly clerks did and they did it with what?