Tag Archives: History

CEFRES Team

Cloé Boucon – Research & CV

“Between tradition and Emancipation: a study of the Phalsbourg genizah”

CEFRES Research areas 1, 2 and 3

Contact: cloe.boucon@enssib.fr

Cloé Boucon is a PhD student in history and the history of the book at Lumière Lyon 2 University and the Centre Gabriel Naudé (French National Library and Information Science School – ENSSIB), where she is preparing, under the supervision of Malcolm Walsby (ENSSIB/Lumière Lyon 2 University) and Michèle Tauber (University of Strasbourg), a doctoral thesis studying the paper documents discovered in the genizah, a ritual repository for damaged books and objects that could not be destroyed due to their sacred nature and were stored in the attic of a synagogue in Phalsbourg, Moselle (France), dating from the 17th century to the early 20th century.

Her interdisciplinary doctoral research employs analytical methods drawn from various fields of history: the history of the book, cultural history, religious history, economic history, microhistory, the history of minorities and migration, geographical history, linguistic history and the archaeology of the book. This encompasses all techniques aimed at analyzing the physical characteristics of books and examining every detail of their material existence, paper, typography, illustrations, provenance, stamps, marks, bookplates and ex-libris in order to better understand their uses as well as their economic, intellectual and cultural evolution; analyses the paper documents from the Phalsbourg genizah in their entirety. Examining the question of the provenance and circulation of works, as well as of the individuals who made up the Jewish community of Phalsbourg in Europe, especially in Central Europe and beyond, Jerusalem and the United States of America. As well as the practices of reading and using these documents over a relatively long period (annotations, stitching, bookplates, drawings, preparations and repairs).

 

CV

Academic Training and Diplomas

Doctoral degree in History, University Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France

2024–Present: Doctoral degree in History: Between tradition and Emancipation: a study of the paper materials of the Phalsbourg genizah supervision by Malcolm Walsby (University Professor in Book History, French National Library and Information Science School, University Lumière Lyon 2) and Michèle Tauber (University Professor Hebrew-Jewish Studies, Strasbourg University)

Affiliation: Graduate school: Social Sciences (ED483) University Lumière Lyon 2

Research lab: Gabriel Naudé Center – French National Library and Information Science School (ENSSIB)

2022-2024: Master’s degree in History, Civilizations and Heritage, “Cultures of the written word and image”, French National Library and Information Science School with distinction, Villeurbanne, France

2020-2022: Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies with a major in Hebrew and Jewish Studies – Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France

Scientific Publications

BOUCON Cloé, “From printing to forgetting: the circles of life of a Hebrew book” [online] Universal Short Title Catalogue Blog https://www.ustc.ac.uk/news/from-printing-to-forgetting-the-circles-of-life-of-a-hebrew-book (7 April 2026)

BOUCON Cloé, “Profanes et pourtant sacrés : les livres cachés de la genizah de Bergheim“, École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l’Information et des Bibliothèques [online] https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/documents/72456-profanes-et-pourtant-sacres-les-livres-caches-de-la-genizah-de-bergheim.pdf (22 November 2024)

Participation to conferences (selection)

5 May 2026: Lecture “Josef Schlesinger and Moritz Burian, pioneers of plurilingual editions between Vienna and Budapest” at the conference “Parallel Paths, Shared Past: Jewish History and Genealogy in Central Europe” (4-6 May 2026), organized by the Association for Central European Jewish History and Genealogy and held at Central European University, Vienna (Austria)

28 March: Lecture “The Phalsbourg genizah, fragmented library of a Jewish Community from Moselle” during the “Rencontres archéologiques du Grand Est 2026” (27-28 March 2026) organized by the Grand Est Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs, Sarrebourg (France)

16 January 2026: Lecture at the French Contemporary Religious History association during the annual conference at Sorbonne University: “Money, Money, Money: religions, capital, finances” about the different charity practices in the Jewish Community of Phalsbourg, Paris (France)

16 December 2025: Presentation of my research during “Thèses en Lumière” in the University Lumière Lyon 2 library, Lyon (France)

13 October 2025: Participation during the “Fête de la Science” by presenting my research, French National Library and Information Science School (ENSSIB), Villeurbanne (France)

9 October 2025: Communication: “The Phalsbourg genizah, a reserve of germanic Hebrew books?” at the international conference Acutus et Argutus: Early Modern Print Culture (8-10 October 2025) in Motion at the Martynas Mažvydas (the National Library of Lithuania) and at the National Museum of Lithuania in Vilnius (Lithuania)

30 March 2025: Communication for the Regional Historical Days organized by the Grand Est Region (East of France): Libraries in attics, the Bergheim and Phalsbourg genizot, Pont-à-Mousson (France)

October 2022: Lecture about the poetry of Bouena Sarfatty-Garfinkle in Judeo-Spanish organized by the Jewish Studies Department at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium)

March 2022: Lecture about the memorial writing of Clarisse Nicoïdski organized by the Hebrew-Jewish Studies Department in Aix-Marseille University (France)

Internships

February 2024–June 2024: Internship at the Alliance Israélite Universelle Library in Paris: Analysis and Provenance Research on the nazis stamps in the collection, cataloging this information. Investigate an ensemble of looted books by nazis from different collections in Paris during World War II

June 2023–July 2023: Internship at the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris (curation department): Study (materiality, state, use, date and place of publication) of a Sephardic rabbi book collection in Hebrew, Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish

Summer schools

24 August 2025–29 August 2025: Jewish Heritage Seminar in Amsterdam, organized by the Rothschild Hanadiv Europe Foundation: Field seminar about Jewish Heritage. Visiting and analyzing the Jewish Heritage of Amsterdam

CEFRES Team

Niya Metodieva – Research & CV

The “Children” of Socialism: The Shaping of Youth and the Building of a Socialist Society in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1944–1968)

Research Area 2: Norms and transgressions

This thesis aims to analyze the construction of socialist society in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria “through” (S. Maza) the issue of youth, from the coup d’état of September 9, 1944, which brought to power the Communist-led coalition of the Fatherland Front, until 1968. By historicizing the construction of the category of “youth,” it proposes to examine the evolution of the sociopolitical boundaries that governed the multiple meanings attached to the notion of “socialist society.” In doing so, she analyzes, in a process-oriented and situated manner, the transformation of the mechanisms of integration and exclusion within this society under construction, the principles according to which they were constituted, and the way in which different groups were thus reconfigured.

She develops a socio-historical methodology rooted in the “critical turn” of the Annales school, which seeks to move beyond the supposed dichotomy between ideology and practice, between representation and action, by proposing a practical history of categories. From a dual methodological perspective, she seeks to understand the co-construction between communist power and socialist society, which requires taking all historical actors “seriously.” Thus, the inquiry unfolds on three levels: first, it examines the construction of categories at the political level; then, their negotiation at the institutional level (high schools and universities) and the potential “controversies” arising from them; and finally, it explores how social trajectories and lived experiences were transformed by the evolution of governance practices. The cross-referencing of political sources (archives of the Bulgarian Communist Party, the Youth Union, biographies, police records) with archives from the Ministry of Public Education (reports, expulsions, documents relating to purges in high schools and universities) and interviews allows for a fresh perspective on socialist construction and the experiences of young people, with a particular emphasis on the issue of repression.

More broadly, the theis, which follows a traditional chronological framework (the postwar period, Stalinization, and de-Stalinization), examines the conceptions of society and social change produced by Bulgarian society and the socialist state through its population policy. The objectification and construction of different “generations,” as well as the production of homogeneous visions of youth, allow us to question the possibility of speaking of “socialist governmentality” but also to situate socialist policy within a longer-term local perspective linking youth and nation. The temporal boundaries allow for a comparison of the experiences of different cohorts (those born around the 1920s and those of the 1940s) against the backdrop of the growing institutionalization of “youth.”

CV

Education

  • Depuis 2022 : Doctorante contractuelle (CNRS International) en histoire (EHESS)
  • 2020- 2022 : Master histoire (EHESS, Paris). Thèse préparée sous la direction d’Alain Blum (EHESS/INED) et de Catherine Gousseff (CNRS/CERCEC).
  • 2016-2020 : Double Licence histoire- histoire de l’art et archéologie (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Fellowship

  • 2026 : dans le cadre de CARSI/Horizon Europe avec l’ONG Transitions. Association au CEFRES et à l’IMS de l’Université Charles.

Teaching Experience

  • Septembre – Décembre 2025 – Chargée de cours : Histoire sociale et politique de la France au XXs. (L2, Université Paris-Nanterre) (48h).

Presentations (sélection)

  • 19 janvier 2026 – Séminaire : « Empire russe, URSS, sociétés et territoires post-impériaux. Savoirs et pratiques de l’État » (CERCEC/EHESS). Présentation : « La genèse d’une société socialiste bulgare ? Penser, réguler et construire les nouvelles frontières sociales en sortie de guerre : le cas de la jeunesse (1944-1947).
  • 22 janvier 2024 – Workshop “The Voices from Below in the Face of Repression and Arbitrary State Violence” (CEFRES, EHESS, Charles University, Czech Academy of Sciences). Workshop Paper: “Defending Values, Seeking Justice: Parent’s Petitions to the Minister of Popular Enlightenment as Voices from Below, Bulgaria (1944-1946)”
  • 26 septembre 2024 : Table ronde à “Allez Savoir-Marseille » (EHESS). « Le temps de l’obéissance ? Adolescences européennes à l’épreuve des bouleversements du long XXe siècle », avec Emma Papadacci (LIER-FYT) et Lucas Bouguereau (LIER-FYT). Table ronde animée par Julie Pagis (IRIS/CNRS).
  • 5-6 Avril 2024 – Conference Moving Beyond the Centre-Periphery Dynamics: Central and Eastern Europe from the mid-19th century to the present”. Conference paper: “Managing Time, Creating Specialists: Socialist Modernization as seen through the Youth Brigade Movement in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1947-1950)”.

Organisation of academic sessions

  • Co-organisatrice de la Conférence doctorale du CERCEC-CETOBaC, « Modernities Debated. Crossed perspectives from Russian, Soviet and Ottoman (post-)imperial spaces: Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans, Eastern Mediterranean, Caucasus and Central Asia” 21 et 22 mai 2024.
Research Projects

No Colonies, Still Colonial?

(Czecho)Slovak History and the French Colonial Empire in Africa (18th–early 20th centuries)

This project is carried out within the TANDEM CNRS-SAV program developed by the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), the CNRS Humanities & Social Sciences (CNRS SHS), and CEFRES.

Project principal investigators:
Silvester TRNOVEC (Institute of Oriental Studies, SAV / CEFRES)
Romain TIQUET (Institut des mondes africains, CNRS / CEFRES)

ANNOTATION Continue reading No Colonies, Still Colonial? →

CEFRES Team

Romain Tiquet – Research & CV

Romain Tiquet holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2019, he has been a CNRS researcher (section 35) at the Institut des Mondes Africains. After working on the history of law enforcement in Burkina Faso, his thesis focused on labor mobilization in (post)colonial Senegal. Since 2019, he has been interested in the history of madness in West Africa and is leading the ERC project : https://madaf.hypotheses.org/

Starting in January 2026, he will be hosted at CEFRES, in collaboration with Slovak Africanist and historian Silvestr Trnovec, to develop a new project entitled “No Colonies, Still Colonial (Czecho)Slovak History and the French Colonial Empire in Africa (18th–early 20th centuries)“. This project is being implemented as part of the TANDEM SAV–CNRS 2026-2027 program and explores the historical links between the Czechoslovak space and the French colonial empire in Africa.

CEFRES Team, Non classé

Adam M. Aksnowicz – Research & CV

“Towards What Homeland?
(Trans)National Armies in Exile and Renegotiations of Polish and Czechoslovak National Narratives, 1938-48“

Contact: aksnowicz_adam@phd.ceu.edu

Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysements,” and Descrepancies: People, Knowledge, and Practices

Adam M. Aksnowicz is a doctoral candidate at the Department of History, Central European University in Vienna, Austria. His dissertation, Towards What Homeland? (Trans)National Armies in Exile and Renegotiations of Polish and Czechoslovak National Narratives, 1938-48, under the supervision of Constantine Iordachi and Charles Shaw, is being developed in cooperation with CEFRES Research Area 1.

My dissertation reassesses the historical phenomenon of national armed forces in exile during the Second World War by analyzing military nation-building projects of Polish armies in exile and the Czechoslovak resistance abroad from transnational, comparative, and global perspectives. Building from my previous MA thesis entitled, “Without Lwów and Wilno There is No Poland” The Cause of Kresy in Exiled Polish Army Press and Propaganda in Italy, 1944-1946, my current project explores conceptual-historical complexities and persistent legacies of national-military exile(s) in renegotiations of nation, state, and homeland between the downfall of the young post-Versailles republics and the radical post-war reconstruction of East Central Europe. By contextualizing Polish and Czechoslovak military exile within transnational, global, and imperial-colonial entanglements of Europe’s early twentieth-century’ “age of catastrophe” (Doumanis 2016), I aim to move beyond dominant national-patriotic approaches and binary Cold War frameworks to contribute to new critical scholarship of exiled state apparatuses during WWII and engage with interdisciplinary discussions surrounding topics like exile, civil-military relations, transnationalities of nation-building, and collective narrative (re)construction.

As a researcher with a background in both sociology and history, my research to date has primarily focused on historical and collective memory studies of interwar, wartime, and early Cold War Poland/Polish diaspora in global contexts. However, during my time in Prague with CEFRES, I look forward to further developing the comparative Czechoslovak dimension of my dissertation by visiting the Czech state archives as well as discussing other analogous cases of exile/displacement with like-minded colleagues to strengthen the project’s overall conceptual framework.

Education

  • 2022 – current: PhD Candidate, Comparative History at Central European University, Vienna, Austria.
  • 2019-2020: MA, Comparative History at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
  • 2016-2018: MA, Sociology – Intercultural Mediation at University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland. Winner of the Dean’s Award for Best MA Thesis at UWr Faculty of Social Sciences (2018).
  • 2012-2014: BA, History at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Teaching Experience

  • 2023/2024 Fall: Teaching assistant in Comparative, Transnational and Global Histories: Rethinking Geographical and Temporal Scales, under the instruction of Balázs Trencsényi. Department of Comparative History at Central European University, Vienna, AT.

Conferences & Summer Schools

  • Presenter – (Non)Polish Army in Exile? Researching the Red Army’s Kościuszko Division Between History and Contested Memory. VIII Public History Summer School. The Historical Institute of the University of Wrocław, Poland (HI UWr), Wrocław, PL, 9-13 June 2025.
  • Presenter – Antisemitism, Propaganda, and Polish Armies in Exile during WWII. ComFas Summer School on Fascism, Antisemitism and the Holocaust: Theory, Methodology, and Case Studies. International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies (ComFas), Rijeka, HR, 9-14 July 2023.
  • Presenter – Echoes of Wartime Trauma: Children of Polish Deportees Living in the West after WWII. XIX International Student Conference “Communication and Culture” at University of Wrocław, PL, 23-24 May 2018.
  • Presenter – The Holy Constitution? Sacred Roles of Historic Legal Text in Democratic Nation-States. IV International Conference “Law-Religion-Politics.” SKN Doctrines of Politics and Law at the University of Wrocław, PL, 13-14 April 2018.
  • Panel Moderator – Postwar Generations Remember (Concluding Panel). Kresy Siberia Foundation “Generations Remember” Conference at The History Meeting House, Warsaw, PL, 15-17 September 2017.
  • Presenter – Orange Dwarves and Pepe the Frog: A Comparison of Absurdity as Political Tactic by Poland’s Historic Orange Alternative and the Contemporary American Alt-Right. XVIII Annual International Student Conference “Communication and Culture” at the University of Wrocław, PL, 25-26 May 2017.

Publications and Projects

  • Nowy rozdział starej Res Publica Nowa, 4 July 2022.
  • A New Approach to CEE Communism Studies. Reassessing Communism: Concepts, Culture, and Society in Poland, 1944–1989. Visegrad Insight, 5 October 2021.
  • Uses and Abuses of Political Appeals to ‘Civilization’: Kathryn Ciancia’s Book on Interwar Borderland in Poland. Visegrad Insight, 31 March 2021.
  • A Century of Demagogues in Europe: Ivan T. Berend’s Portraits of Populists between Past and Present. Visegrad Insight, 7 January 2021.
  • Co-Editor of The Polish Museum of America Visitor Brochure, Chicago, USA. Grant Project Funded by the Republic of Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, 2015.
  • Co-Creator of The Polish Museum of America’s Online Collections Database, Chicago, USA. Grant Project Funded by the Republic of Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, 2014. URL: https://polishmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/
CEFRES Team

Andrej Vašíček – Recherche & CV

“Cultural and Historical Memory of the Landscape in Hungary in the 18th Century”

Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces

Introduction

This dissertation examines the cultural and historical memory embedded in the rural and semi-rural landscapes of 18th-century Hungary. It explores how local communities perceived, shaped, and remembered their surroundings, focusing on the material traces, spatial practices, and symbolic representations that connected people to the land over time.

Research Questions

  • How was the landscape remembered and represented in legal, religious, and social contexts during the 18th century?
  • What material or symbolic traces of past uses and meanings can be identified in the landscape (e.g. crosses, boundary markers, hydrological structures, routes)?
  • How did natural features (rivers, forests, hills) become part of collective memory or identity?
  • In what ways did the transformation of the landscape—through cultivation, regulation, or settlement—affect the cultural memory of its inhabitants?

Methodology

The research combines approaches from environmental history, historical anthropology, and critical cartography. It draws on a variety of historical sources:

  • Urbaria and conscriptions, reflecting the socio-economic use of land.
  • Historical maps and cadastral plans, to track spatial organization and memory.
  • Parish records, inscriptions, and religious monuments, to trace symbolic landscape elements.
  • Narrative sources (such as local chronicles) for mental and lived geographies.

The project uses microhistorical case studies from specific regions of historical Upper Hungary to reconstruct the interaction between people and landscape.

Empirical Foundation:

The primary empirical basis includes:

  • Archival material from the Hungarian National Archives and Slovak regional archives.
  • 18th-century maps from military and ecclesiastical collections.
  • Fieldwork involving the documentation of surviving landscape features (e.g. stone crosses, remnants of old field systems, flood regulation structures).

Contribution to CEFRES Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping

The dissertation contributes to the understanding of landscape as a palimpsest of objects and traces—a space marked by layers of past meanings, uses, and representations. It proposes that the memory of place is not only transmitted through texts or rituals but also inscribed into the terrain through spatial practices and preserved physical remnants. By investigating how people inhabited and interpreted their environment, this research offers a historical perspective on the production of space, connecting tangible objects with intangible memory. It also engages in mapping these traces, both literally (through GIS) and conceptually, as a way to understand how landscapes become historical and cultural archives.