History, Politics and Culture in Medieval Europe (HPCEM) Master's and Research Seminar 2025-2026: Mobilizing the community

The "History, Politics and Culture of Medieval Europe (HPCEM)" research seminar adopts a multidisciplinary approach that includes history, political science, sociology, geography as well as the arts. For 2025-2026, the seminar will focus on the theme of "Mobilizing the community". This will involve studying all forms of mobilization, whether sought, imposed or suffered, through which individuals, associations, social movements or political elites evoke and transform the notion of collectivity. The reconfigurations of medieval Europe in the contemporary era have been shaped by the legacy of empires and authoritarian regimes, the construction of nation-states, the shifting of borders, and the process of European integration. This complexity provides an interesting lens through which to examine the notion of collectivity, placing it in the context of major historical turning points and contemporary issues. In particular, the seminar explores the political actions undertaken by civil societies, interest groups, networks and diasporas, which define collectivity in terms of coexistence, discrimination, solidarity, belonging and otherness, as well as people, nation, alliance, community (or association), class, gender or generation. This will also lead us to reflections at the crossroads of several disciplines on how research mobilizes categories of analysis to study the collective dimension of forms of action.

Programme for 1^er semester

- Session 1: Tuesday, September 23, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Salle 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

• Introduction

- Session 2: Tuesday September 30, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Room 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

• Anders Blomqvist (Dalarna University, Sweden): Peasants into Romanians and the Romanian Question in dualist Hungary before the First World War

- Session 3: Tuesday October 7, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Room 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

• Teele Tõnismann (University of Toulouse and Adoc Talent Management): Research funding reforms in the Baltic countries: institutional legacy, internationalization and competition (1988 - mid-2010s)

- Session 4: Tuesday, October 14, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Room 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

Ekaterina Pierson-Lyzhina (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Politically mobilizing in exile: partisan and non-partisan alliances within the Belarusian opposition and the influence of the European Union

- Session 5: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Room 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

Audrey Kichelewski (CREE, Inalco): Mobilizing to judge: Polish society facing justice for war criminals, from 1945 to the 1970s

- Session 6: Tuesday, November 6, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Room 4.19 (with possibility of following by videoconference)

• Francesco Magno (Sciences Po Paris): Troubled Waters: Technological Development, Adaptation and Resistance along the Lower Danube during the Cold War

- Session 7: Tuesday November 18, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Salle 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

• Aymeric Pantet (University of Turku, Finland): Emmanuelle versus Karl Vaino: The role of Finnish television in northeastern Soviet Estonia as a window to the West

- Session 8: Tuesday, November 25, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e), Salle 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

• Eric Le Bourhis (CREE, Inalco): "Nous les urbanistes": the professionalization of architect-urbanists in Soviet Latvia in the 1940s-1960s

- Session 9: Tuesday, November 25, 2025 from 5pm to 7pm at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris 13e),Room 4.19 (with possibility to follow by videoconference)

• Session dedicated to student presentations.s

Coordination

• Andreas Guidi (CREE, Inalco)
• Katerina Kesa (CREE, Inalco)

Contacts

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