Non classé

Committee’s Composition 2015-2016

Statutory Members

  • Pavel Baran, Vice President in charge of Research Area III. Humanities and Social Sciences of AV ČR
  • Lenka Rovná, Vice-Rector for European Affairs of UK
  • Clara Royer, director of CEFRES

UK Representatives

AV ČR Representatives

Calls for Papers

CFP: French pragmatism and the renewal of contemporary sociology

Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2016
Date & Place: 15&16 December 2016
Language: English
Organizers: Paul Blokker (FSV UK) and Nicolas Maslowski (CCFEF of Warsaw University)

French pragmatic sociology will be the main theme in the workshop on “French pragmatism and the renewal of contemporary sociology”, held on 15 and 16 December, and organized by the Institute of Sociological Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences), the Department of Historical Sociology (Faculty of Humanities), Charles University, the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES) and the CCFEF UW—Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies of Warsaw University.

Pragmatic sociology – as a distinct, new type of French social science – probably became most well-known in the global academic community because of the publication in English of the landmark publication by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, On Justification. Economies of Worth, in 2006 (original: 1991, Editions Gallimard).  On Justification is, however, probably best understood as a ‘travail d’étape’ , an intermediate stage in a much larger and highly original social-theoretical enterprise, to which evermore scholars in a variety of disciplines contribute (e.g. historians, anthropologists, economists) in a range of research endeavours. The workshop will explore the fundamentals of this approach and the insights it has brought, and still brings, to contemporary sociological and interdisciplinary research. The upshot is to explore the rich potentialities of pragmatic sociology and to discuss its relevance and usage in Czech sociology.

Prof. Laurent Thévenot will open the workshop with a lecture on the recent and current further developments in his work. Much of prof. Thévenot’s work since On Justification draws on earlier insights while developing an innovative and rich perspective on the analysis of social life. Prof. Thévenot explores the dimensions of social life ‘under the public’ as a condition to enlarge the scope of public critique to oppressions, and to understand the required transformations and obstacles to their exposition in common, to the discord of the political community.

Please send your proposition (150-200 words) to the organizers before November 15th.

A workshop organized by:
Institute of Sociological Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences)
Department of Historical Sociology (Faculty of Humanities), Charles University
French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES)
Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies of Warsaw University

Calls for Applications, France > Visegrad, Mobility

IAS CEU Fellowships for the 2017/18 Academic Year

The Institute for Advanced Study at CEU (IAS CEU) is pleased to invite applications for its fellowships for the academic year 2017/18.

The application deadline for all four fellowships is: October 24, 2016.

Calls are open for the fellowships listed below. Applications to more than one of the programs are possible but the application process and the requirements are not always the same.

SENIOR AND JUNIOR CORE FELLOWSHIPS – 12-15 awards
HUMANITIES INITIATIVE JUNIOR FELLOWSHIPS – 2 awards
THYSSEN@IAS CEU FELLOWSHIPS – 2 awards
BOTSTIBER FELLOWSHIP – 1-2 awards

IAS CEU Fellowships are highly competitive and will be awarded on the basis of scholarly excellence.

The Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University (IAS CEU) has as its primary mission to support excellent scholars in their pursuit of knowledge in a multidisciplinary scholarly environment. Each year, IAS CEU invites some 20 researchers in the social sciences and humanities to spend 3 to 10 months as fellows working on their own research projects. Visiting scholars benefit from the University’s academic and technical resources and from the vibrant cultural and intellectual scene in Budapest. IAS CEU seeks to build connections among its fellows, CEU faculty, and local and regional academic institutions to facilitate high-level interdisciplinary cooperation. For further information on IAS CEU, please visit: http://ias.ceu.edu/.

CEFRES Team

CEFRES Team of Researchers 2015-2016

István Pál Ádám

Contact: istvan.adam@cefres.cz

is from January 2016 a post-doctoral researcher at CEFRES and at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University, benefitting from the support of the Charles University in Prague. His research project is entitled The Spatial Control of Central European Concierges and contributes to CEFRES research area 3.

Chiara Mengozzi

Contact: chiara.mengozzi@cefres.cz

is from January 2016 a post-doctoral researcher at CEFRES and at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, benefitting from the support of the Charles University in Prague. Her research project is entitled Animal Matters. Challenging the Anthropological Difference and Literary Norms and contributes to CEFRES’s research area 2.

Giuseppe Bianco

Contact: giuseppe.bianco@cefres.cz

benefits from a four month long fellowship (May—August 2016) at CEFRES. A post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lyon III, his project focuses on the history of world congresses of philosophy between 1900 and 1950, and fits CEFRES research area 1.

Ioana Cîrstocea

Contact: iona.cirstocea@cefres.cz

is a researcher at CNRS within the research unity CESSP Paris. She is hosted at CEFRES from 15 April to 15 June 2016 within the frame of her research on Gender As a Transnational Platform. Toward a Sociology of the Diffusion of Feminist Knowledges in Central Europe in the 1990s, which contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Perin Emel Yavuz

Contact: perin-emel.yavuz@cefres.cz

benefits from a six month long fellowship (March—August 2016) at CEFRES. She is an affiliated member of the Research Centre of Arts and Language (CRAL-EHESS UMR 8566). Her research project focuses on the avant-garde conceptual art in the 1960s—1980s in Bratislava. It fits CEFRES research areas 1 and 2 but also touches upon research area 3.

Ségolène Plyer

Contact: s.plyer@cefres.cz

is an assistant professor at the Strasbourg University. She is hosted at CEFRES from 5 February to 5 May 2016 within the frame of her research on Eastern Bohemia in the First Globalization (1870s-1940s), which contributes to CEFRES research area 1.

Cécile Guillaume-Pey

Contact: cecile.guillaume-pey@cefres.cz

benefits from a six month long fellowship (September 2015—February 2016) at CEFRES. She is affiliated to the Center of Social Anthropology in Toulouse (CAS-LISST). Her research project deals with modes on reception and appropriation of writing within the Sora and other tribal groups in India. It contributes to CEFRES research areas 1 and 2.

Filip Vostal

Contact: filip.vostal@cefres.cz

is a post-doctoral researcher at CEFRES and the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic. His research project is entitled “Slowing down” Modernity: Risky, Futile or Progressive? and contributes to CEFRES research area 2.

seminars

Uses and Limits of Concepts in Social Sciences and Humanities

CEFRES Epistemological Seminar 2016-2017

Conveners: István Pál Ádám (CEFRES), Clara Royer (CEFRES) and Tomáš Weiss (IMS FSV UK)
Where: CEFRES library – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: every second Thursday from 3:30 pm to 5 pm
23 February,  9 & 23 March, 6 & 20 April, 11 May
Language: English

The program of the Summer Semester 2016-2017 is already available on our calendar!

Abstract

This seminar wants to provide young researchers with a theoretical background and help them to reflect upon how they use and elaborate relevant concepts for their PhD research. It will also highlight the differences and similarities in using concepts in different disciplines.

Each session will be led by a young researcher, who will comment on a theoretical text introducing a key-concept for his/her field and open it for discussion. Therefore, various concepts will be presented through their definitions, uses and limits. Concepts can’t be considered as a permanent “tool box” to which a social scientist could turn each time he/she conducts research, hence the necessity to think upon concept formation. The seminar aims at preventing the pitfalls of flat empiricism, words confusion, over-theorization, and at thinking through the uses and misuses of concepts. It could touch upon concepts such as “identity”, “modernity”, “moral behaviour”, “security”, “society”, “culture”, “form”, “gender”, “church”, “capitalism”, “professionalism”, and so forth.

Seminar is open to PhD students and post-doctoral scholars. Each session will begin with an overview of one selected reading mainly in English, followed by a discussion. The reader with texts will be available in electronic form. Please write to Claire Madl to get the reader : claire@cefres.cz

A few texts on concepts

  1. Bastien Bosa, “Des concepts et des faits”, Labyrinthe [online], 37 | 2011 (2), online on 01/08/2013.
  2. John Drysdale, “How Are Social-Scientific Concepts Formed? A Reconstruction of Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation”, Sociological Theory 14, no. 1 (1996), pp. 71-88.
  3. Bernard Fradin, Louis Quéré, Jean Widmer (eds.), L’enquête sur les catégories. De Durkheim à Sacks, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 1994.
  4. John Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences”, Polity 31, no. 3 (1999), pp. 357-93.
seminars

CEFRES EPISTEMOLOGICAL SEMINAR: USES AND LIMITS OF CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Conveners: István Pál Ádám (CEFRES), Clara Royer (CEFRES) and Tomáš Weiss (IMS FSV UK)
Where: CEFRES library – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: every second Thursday from 3:30 pm to 5 pm
2, 9 and 23 March, 6 and 20 April, 11 May 2017
Language: English

See the program of the Summer Semester 2016-2017

Abstract

This seminar wants to provide young researchers with a theoretical background and help them to reflect upon how they use and elaborate relevant concepts for their PhD research. It will also highlight the differences and similarities in using concepts in different disciplines.

Each session will be led by a young researcher, who will comment on a theoretical text introducing a key-concept for his/her field and open it for discussion. Therefore, various concepts will be presented through their definitions, uses and limits. Concepts can’t be considered as a permanent “tool box” to which a social scientist could turn each time he/she conducts research, hence the necessity to think upon concept formation. The seminar aims at preventing the pitfalls of flat empiricism, words confusion, over-theorization, and at thinking through the uses and misuses of concepts. It could touch upon concepts such as “identity”, “modernity”, “moral behaviour”, “security”, “society”, “culture”, “form”, “gender”, “church”, “capitalism”, “professionalism”, and so forth.

Seminar is open to PhD students and post-doctoral scholars. Each session will begin with an overview of one selected reading mainly in English, followed by a discussion. The reader with texts will be available in electronic form. Please write to Claire Madl to get the reader : claire@cefres.cz

A few texts on concepts

  1. Bastien Bosa, “Des concepts et des faits”, Labyrinthe [online], 37 | 2011 (2), online on 01/08/2013.
  2. John Drysdale, “How Are Social-Scientific Concepts Formed? A Reconstruction of Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation”, Sociological Theory 14, no. 1 (1996), pp. 71-88.
  3. Bernard Fradin, Louis Quéré, Jean Widmer (eds.), L’enquête sur les catégories. De Durkheim à Sacks, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 1994.
  4. John Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences”, Polity 31, no. 3 (1999), pp. 357-93.

French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences – Prague