Conferences

18th October 2024, Grosse Scharrnstrasse 23 a, Frankfurt (Oder), Room 105 (Wolff-Saal)

Russia’s war against Ukraine has brought Central and Eastern Europe into focus. Since February 2022, there has been a wave of solidarity with Ukraine in Poland – especially in the supply, transport or accommodation of Ukrainian refugees. Many Poles and Ukrainians see themselves united in resolutely opposing the Russian invasion. But these ostentatious convergences are also countered by structural divergences in economic development since 1989.

We want to explore such convergencies and divergencies between Poland and its neighbours since 1918. On the one hand, the region is united by shared experiences of fundamental economic, cultural and demographic transformations in the last century. On the other hand, political life in Poland, Ukraine, but also in the Baltic states, the former GDR and the Post-Yugoslav states is determined by divergent narratives. The antagonistic interpretation of Ukrainian nationalists in World War II in Poland and Ukraine is just one example. Can the war and Polish solidarity with Ukraine be a kind of catalyst for dialogue, for coming to terms with these divergences, or are antagonistic attitudes simply suppressed? What does this war mean for cultural studies? Will the eastern part of the continent become more important? Does this mean that national historical narratives are experiencing a rise? Should Europeanization processes be examined more from a Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Croatian or Serbian perspective?

Programm (PDF):

09:15 Welcome Coffee

09:30 Introduction

09:35 Panel I: MANYFOLD TRANSFORMATIONS (Chair: Tomasz Rawski)

Claudia Foltyn, Augsburg
Poland’s and Its Neighbours’ Quest for Energy Security.
The Case Study of Fracking as an Exemplary Lesson in Value Divergence

Bartosz Matyja, Warsaw
Domesticating Foreign Trade
Economic Narratives and Societal Change in Poland, 1956-1976

10:50 Short Coffee Break

11:00 Panel II: CHALLENGED DEMOCRACY (Chair: Bartosz Matyja)

Anton Liavitski, St. Gallen
Democracy and Its Discontents
Revisiting Post-Communism’s Great Divide

Tomasz Rawski, Warsaw
Visions of Future Russia among Russian War Migrants

12:15 Lunch Break

13:15 Panel III: PROBLEMATIC RELATIONS (Chair: Stephan Rindlisbacher)

Alexandra Pulvermacher, Klagenfurt
German-Soviet Collaboration in the Persecution of the Polish Resistance, September 1939 – June 1941

Magdalena Gibiec, Wrocław
Radicalisation to Violence
Understanding Polish-Ukrainian Relations in Interwar Period through the Prism of Resentment

14:30 Coffee Break

15:00 Panel IV: COMPETING COMMEMORATIONS (Chair: Falk Flade)

Mark Keck-Szajbel, Frankfurt (Oder)
Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Never-Ending Debate on Reparations

Veronika Warzycha, Berlin
The Socio-Spatial Memory of the Polish-German Border

16:15 Short Coffee Break

16:30 Concluding discussion

17:00 Closure of the Workshop

For the panels, all guests are welcome, please, contact Stephan Rindlisbacher (rindlisbacher@europa-uni.de)

Supported by Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung / Polsko Niemiecka Fundacja na rzecz Nauki

We live in a world of constant change. There are periods, however, of accelerated change in the political, economic, social or technological sphere. Usually, these spheres are closely interrelated and entangled. If this change is of fundamental character, scientists usually speak of ´transformations´. Common examples are the political and economic system changes, i.e. transformations, in Latin America, Southern Europe or Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the past decades.

The aim of the conference is to shed light on technological, but also political, societal and environmental sides of these transformations in Europe and other regions in past and present.

The VCPU Annual Conference 2025 is dedicated to the conclusion of the 7-year research project "Mod-Block-DDR" and to the focus on the current and future challenges of Polish and Ukrainian studies at the European University Viadrina. Both events are marked by the terms "modernization" and "transformation": The summary of the research results on socialist modernization in the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland, their achievements and blockades, serves as a stimulus to discuss the political, economic, social and cultural transformations of the region of Central and Eastern Europe, especially East Germany, Poland and Ukraine, which have been underway since the 1980s. We would like to dedicate a special place to Ukraine as a new space of modernization changes (migration, opening to Western Europe, integration with the EU) and socio-economic transformation that began with the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. This opens up the diverse theoretical and methodological possibilities of Polish and Ukrainian studies: interdisciplinarity, which is based on historical, political and cultural studies and brings together the cooperation of scholars from Germany, Poland and Ukraine. The conference thus offers the opportunity to present new research results in the field of Polish and Ukrainian studies, to create new paradigms and to strengthen cross-border scientific dialogue.

European University Viadrina, and the Association of Polish Economist (TEP) invite submissions to a scientific conference themed

“ECONOMIC SHOCKS, RESILIENCE AND INSTITUTIONS”.

This is the third conference (the first international), which aims to commemorate Prof. Jan Winiecki and promote the exchange of ideas and research findings on societies’ coping strategies and resilience with respect to economic shocks and transformation processes (in the broadest sense) and the mitigating role of institutions.

Invited are contributions from all fields of economics as well as from interdisciplinary research collaborations between related fields of social science and economic history.

The organizers particularly encourage and welcome contributions from PhD students and postdocs at their early stages of careers.

Conference agenda (PDF)

Hybrid Workshop

Chaired by Dr. Denys Shatalov, Kryvyi Rih.

Organisers:

Centre Advanced Study Sofia
Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies Tkuma, Dnipro
Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)