When: Friday, November 11th, 16:30 a.m.
Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague and online (please contact cefres[@]cefres.cz
Language: English

The fourth session of CEFRES seminar will be hosted by two researchers:

Jan Kremer (PhD candidate, Charles University / CEFRES) :
Ludohistorical Representations of Religion and Spirituality: Historical Culture and Digital Remediation

Abstract

The paper analyzes digital medievalism constructed in Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Warhorse 2018). It focuses on ludic mechanics, characters and game lore related to religious elements and tries to contextualize them within both the past and contemporary artifacts of Czech popular history.

Julien Wacquez (post-doctorant, CEFRES) :
Approaching Matters: Socio-Historical Perspectives on What Is to Come

Abstract

It is impossible to know what will happen, to determine what the future will be like. What will the world after the multiple ongoing crises look like, for example? A scientific investigation cannot rigorously account for it, for this future world does not yet exist—so it is not. We can neither experience it, concretely live it, nor observe it, collect data about it. And perhaps that this future world will never happen.

The project Approaching Matters considers this absence of being, this lack of phenomenality and observability, as a driving force for a range of practices specialized in bringing the future into presence. If all our everyday actions tend—consciously or unconsciously—towards a certain future, there are fields of activities that explicitly intend to take charge of the future in the present tense, be they scientific or technologic, administrative or managerial, spiritual or esoteric, artistic or literary. Science Fiction, Futurology, Prediction: all these practices offer us a repertoire of scenarios, speculations, models, simulations and other methods to achieve the impossible task of producing “knowledge” about what cannot be known—the future.

When: Friday, October 7th, 16:30
Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, Prague and online (please contact cefres[@]cefres.cz
Language: English

The second session of CEFRES seminar will be hosted by two researchers:

Ronan Hervouet (Professor of sociology, CEFRES / University of Bordeaux):
Belarusian exiles in Central and Eastern Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Research project presentation

Abstract
The research project, called BIELEXIL, aims to understand the consequences of the outbreak of war in Ukraine on Belarusian exiles, who fled their country after 2020 and found refuge in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. It focuses on circulations, experiences and forms of politicization. Funded by the Institut Convergences Migrations (ICM), it is hosted by the CEFRES and is coordinated by Michèle Baussant and Ronan Hervouet. This talk will retrace the different steps that led from conceiving the project to submitting a proposal, discuss the aims of the project, and question possible developments of the research beyond the funding period (2022-2023).

Emina Zoletić (PhD candidate CEFRES / University of Warsaw) :
Intergenerational transmission of the family memory of the war: Displacement and the Bosnian diaspora in Europe 

Abstract
The study of wartime memory transmission has great social and political significance. The past does not simply disappear; lived experience eventually becomes a narrative curated among one generation and passed on to another. Moreover, even when a story appears to die, it may only lie dormant, ready to emerge generations or even centuries, later.

The proposed discussion focuses on the specific case of the intergenerational transmission of memory among families of those who lived through the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and among Bosnian families living abroad in the EU. The proposed discussion offers an interdisciplinary approach (sociology combined with social psychology and memory studies ) in a multidisciplinary context, with a methodological focus.  It will also focus on how the past is played out in a wider social, political, and cultural context.