Subject Area
Positioning in International Organisations and Conflicts
Recent research on the history of international organisations and the reordering of the world after the »great«—hot and cold—wars of the 20th century have expanded both the long-dominating focus on the bipolarity of the East-West conflict and the traditionally state-centred perspective. Increasingly, questions about the concerns, positioning and spheres of agency of actors from across the world, as well as their numerous national, state, political and professional affiliations, are taking centre stage.
It is within this framework that this subject area studies the broad spectrum of East European participation in international and regional organisations, which from the late 19th century had developed into both hubs for interactions as well as central arenas for regulating cross-border problems and conflict constellations. Examining new global entanglements in the wake of international conflicts, this thematic area also investigates what East European expertise developed which enabled to address the global nature of regional problems and what capacities of reading globality could be accessed in solving them in supra-regional manners.
Research Subjects
Comecon and the Global Economic Order
This section examines the European Comecon states’ economic relations to countries of the Global South, East-European companies’ operations in the European and global transportation markets as well as the political and scientific efforts to alter the global economic order.
Expertise in the International Sphere
Under this thematic focus Polish experts are examined who held key positions in the administrations of the League of Nations and the United Nations and coupled these with their (trans-)regional connections to pursue alternative political agendas which aimed at reshaping international politics.
Facing Catastrophe
This study explores Jewish responses to genocidal violence in Romania from 1938 to 1948. Focusing on the Jewish community’s leading and long-standing representative at the time, it inquires about concrete efforts, networks, and the meaning of resistance.
Femicides: A European History
The project examines the history of violence against women in Europe in the long 20th century. It illuminates the complex interactions between private and public life and between social norms and legislative practice.
Queer Activism in Poland
This historical study examines how queer activists in Poland have networked and organised since the 1980s. Drawing on extensive source material, it analyses their different political strategies and the role of transnational networks.
Sexual Violence in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe in World War II
Englischsprachiger Sammelband »Gendered Violence in War and the Structures of Silencing. Vergleichende Perspektiven auf Asien und Mittel- und Osteuropa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg«
Women’s Politics and Postwar Reconstruction in Romania
How did women politicians and grassroots activists shape the postwar remaking of key political fields? RECKON will investigate the gendered transformation of public health, labour, foreign affairs and culture after World War II, with a focus on Romania 1944–1948.
