Events

Advertising organisation

Institute of History, Jagiellonian University; Milko Kos Historical Institute, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Disciplines

Description

International Conference and Research Workshop

Kraków, June 29 – July 1, 2022

Organizers:

Institute of History, Jagiellonian University

Milko Kos Historical Institute, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Supported by:

Research University – Excellence Initiative

Convenors:

Kamil Ruszała (Jagiellonian University)

Petra Svoljšak (ZRC SAZU)

Keynote lecture:

Peter Gatrell (University of Manchester)

From 29 June to 1 July 2022, the Institute of History of Jagiellonian University will host the international scientific conference "Humans in Motion: War Crisis and Refugees in Europe 1914–1923". During this event, academics from over a dozen countries (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Turkey, the USA, Hungary, and the United Kingdom) will present their research and reflections on war refugees in Europe over a hundred years ago. The keynote will be delivered by Prof. Peter Gatrell (University of Manchester). This conference is part of the R2R project funded by the Research University – Excellence Initiative as part of the research group "Humans in Motion: Refugees in Europe 1914–1923" (PI and research group coordinator: Dr. Kamil Ruszała, Jagiellonian University), implemented in partnership with the Milko Kos Historical Institute, Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. It is an interdisciplinary and international team of experts dealing with the issues of war refugees in the first decades of the 20th century in Europe, thus engaging, integrating and stimulating debate scientists affiliated with various research centers around the world, by creating in Krakow a platform for the exchange of thoughts between scholars of various level (from PhD students, PostDoc to experienced researchers), thus showing the Jagiellonian University as a moderator of international dialogue and debates on current issues through the prism of past experiences. Research on war refugees in the past undertaken by the research group emphasizes that contemporary migration processes are not a new experience for the European continent and its inhabitants: floating borders and people in motion remain an identical but forgotten part of the past and heritage. The problems of war refugees are part of both the discourse and social awareness. Refugeedom is a great lesson of humanitarianism, tolerance, understanding, help, and rational approach of each party, which should be explained to a wider audience. Therefore, the objective is to try to understand contemporary problems through the prism of past experiences, thus completing the educational function of the historical narrative.

PROGRAMME 

Wednesday, 29 June 2022

Venue: Józef Tischner Hall, Collegium Witkowskiego (Gołębia 13)

09:00–09:30 Opening session

Petra Svoljšak (ZRC SAZU) and Kamil Ruszała (Jagiellonian University)

09:30–11:00 Keynote Session:

Peter Gatrell, Europe on the move: further reflections on refugees and refugeedom in the era of the Great War

11:30–12:00 – Coffee break

12:00–13:30 Panel 1: Gender and refugees

Chair: Petra Svoljšak

 Anca Doina Cretu (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS), Confinement, Integration, Exclusion: Reconstructing Women’s Experiences in Austria-Hungary’s Refugee Camps during the First World War

 Dagmar Wernitznig (Unversity of Ljubljana), Transborder Tragedies and Transgenerational Trauma: Refugeeism and Gender in the Shatter Zones of the North-Eastern Adriatic Region during the Greater War

 Ablonczy Balazs (Research Centre for the Humanities), “The greatest injustice in the world”. Female voices of refugeedom, Hungary 1920–1921

13:30–15:00 Lunch break

15:00–16:30 Panel 2: Refugees and citiesChair: Keely Stauter-Halsted

 Kieran Taylor (University of Stirling), Civic Humanitarianism: Glasgow, the Great War and Belgian Refugees

 Anna Isaieva (Lund University), A City on the Edge: refugees and the remaking of ethnic and political consciousness in wartime Kyiv

 Umit Eser (ATLAS fellow at CETOBaC), End times in the Aegean: Memories of Destruction and Forced Migration from Smyrna

16:30–17:00 – Coffee break

17:00–18:30 Panel 3: “The others”?Chair: Eriks Jekabsons

 Kathryn Densford (Chaminade College), The “Jewish Affair in Windigsteig”: People on the Move in Provincial Lower Austria

 Gregor Antoličič (ZRC SAZU), The others – the image of refugees from the Slovenian perspective of the First World War

 Victoria Abrahamyan (University of Neuchâtel), Refugees as a great danger for the public health? Armenian refugees between the stereotypes and reality in Syria and Lebanon, 1920-1928

19:00 Reception

Thursday, June 30 2022

 Venue: Józef Tischner Hall, Collegium Witkowskiego (Gołębia 13)

09:00–11:00 am Panel 4: Postwar population order

Chair: Kamil Ruszała

Aleksandar Miletic (Institute of Recent History, Serbia), Immigration Controls in the Economic Periphery? East-Central- and Southeast European perspectives, 1918–1924

Bartosz Ogórek (Polish Academy of Sciences), Where did they come from? The composition of the Polish population in 1921 as the result of war-related migratory moves

Keely Stauter-Halsted (University of Illinois at Chicago), Internment Camps and the End of Empire: Refugee Incarceration and the Sorting of Poland’s Post-Imperial Population

Tomas Balkelis (Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius), The Lithuanian Council (Taryba) and the mass return of WWI refugees to Lithuania in 1918

11:00–11:15 Coffee break

11:15–13:00 Panel 5: Transition and citizenship

Chair: Bartosz Ogórek

Eriks Jekabsons (University of Latvia), Latvia, the changes of population 1914–1920

Kristine Bekere (University of Latvia), Assistance to Latvian refugees after 1918: involvement of Latvian diaspora

Pierre Purseigle (University of Warwick), Leaving refugeedom behind. Resettlement and reconstruction in Belgium and France, 1914–1923

Anna Mashi (Freiburg University), Statelessness and the sortie de guerre in Germany

13:00–14:30 Lunch break

14:30–16:30 Panel 6: State control and refugeesChair: Kieran Taylor

Nik Brandal (Oslo New University College), The Sewer of Europe? Political discourse on immigration and the Norwegian Aliens Act of 1915

Eirik Brazier (University College of Southeastern Norway), The stranger at our gate: The Norwegian state’s attempt at defining and controlling refugees and migrants during the First World War

Bohuslav Rejzl (Charles University in Prague), Public health and war refugees in Bohemian lands in 1914–1923

Kassian Lanz (University of Innsbruck), Military pragmatism or ethnicism? Evacuations and deportations in Trentino and Tyrol during WWI

16:30–17:00 Coffee break

17:00–18:30 Panel 7: Ethnicism, nationalism and representationChair: Balázs Ablonczy

Dmitar Tasić (Institute for Recent History of Serbia/University of Hradec Kralove), Prisoners of war or refugees? The fate of the Balkan Muslims recruited by the Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire during the Great War

Lidia Zessin-Jurek (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS), “Shall We Rejoin the Nation (złączym się z narodem)?” — Historiography on Post-WWI Refugee Movement in Poland between ‘Native’ and ‘National’ Paradigm

Pieter Trogh (In Flandres Field Museum), Revisioning Belgium’s First World War Exodus from below

Closing remarks: Petra Svoljšak and Kamil Ruszała

19:00 Cocktail

Friday, 01 July 2022

Field workshop