Call for Postgraduate Panelists for the 3rd BASEES Regional Conference: Globalizing Eastern Europe - New Perspectives on Transregional Entanglements

The BASEES Postgraduate Representatives, Szinan Radi and Jessica Lovett, are soliciting for postgraduate panelists for a funded panel at the 2nd Regional Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) organised in cooperation with the Leibniz Science Campus ‘Eastern Europe – Global Area’ (EEGA) on 15 - 19 September 2020, in Leipzig, Germany. More information about the conference: https://www.leibniz-eega.de/events/conferences/basees/

Panel title: ‘Eastern European / Soviet Globalisms and Socialist Modernities: new perspectives on the socialist experience’

Eastern Europe as a geographical space and as a particular cultural arena of interaction has been up to lively academic discussions in the past. While some like to date the outset of the region’s distinctive development to various socio-economic factors, such as the second serfdom of the 16th century which preluded the Great Divergence in the Western world, other voices argue that the concept of Eastern Europe itself, as vague as it may be, is a recent intellectual invention and its institutionalisation actually originates from the Enlightenment period.

Through this panel we would like to contribute to some of these discussions surrounding Eastern Europe with a specific focus on the region’s communist period. Central to our interest is how Eastern Europe was seen from the inside as well as the outside during the communist period and how global interactions influenced these differing views. To what extent were these views and various experiences constitutive in influencing the multilinear integration of the region and what other processes could have played part?

With expressions of interest for 20 minute papers, please email Szinan Radi (Doctoral Researcher, University of Nottingham) at szinan.radi@nottingham.ac.uk. Emails should include a 250-word abstract and a short bio including name, contact, institutional affiliation and level of expertise (doctoral researchers are especially welcome). Successful applicants will be provided with financial support up to the value of £200 towards travel and other expenses to attend the conference by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. Successful applicants may also apply for scholarships.

Selected applicants will be notified by 16 December 2019.