International Conference - Interprofessional & Interdisciplinary Relations in Russia

Conference venue: Durham, Institute of Advanced Study
Period: September 19-21, 2014
Deadline for registrations: September 1, 2014

International conference, taking place in Durham on 19-21 September 2014 at the Institute of Advanced Study. Sponsors include Durham University's Faculty of Arts & Humanities and its School of Modern Languages and Cultures, as well as the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES).

Professions and sciences form a complex, highly differentiated yet closely interconnected, field of expert knowledge and labour, vital to all modern states and societies. The focus of this conference will be on the dynamics of this field in Russian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conference will re-examine the history of Russian professions and sciences from a new vantage point – that of interprofessional and interdisciplinary relations. This is a neglected aspect of this history, yet vital to understanding how Russian professions and sciences created, defined and legitimised their work, expertise and jurisdictions.

Friday 19 September 2014
13.00 – 14.00 Registration (with coffee)
14.00 – 14.15 Greetings and Introduction
14.15 – 16.15 Panel I: Writing
Chair: Adam Stock (Newcastle University)
Octavie Bellavance (Yale University)
The Pre-Revolutionary Russian Newspaper as an Interprofessional Institution
Sergey Tyulenev (Durham University)
Translating and Original Writing: Some Reasons for Cross-Professional Involvements
Henrietta Mondry (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
Cosmists-Immortalists, Experiments on Dogs, and Bolshevik Science and Fiction
Tatiana Sokolova (Higher School of Economics, Moscow & Institute of Philosophy, RAS)
Scientist as Fiction Writer: Soviet Science-Fiction and Space Exploration

16.15 – 16.45 Tea break

16.45 – 18.00 Keynote Lecture
Chair: Andy Byford (Durham University)
Steve Fuller (Warwick University)
Russian Cosmism as a Potential Inspiration for Twenty-First Century Interdisciplinary Work
19.00 Dinner at Oldfields

Saturday 20 September 2014
09.30 – 11.00 Panel II: Humanities
Chair: t.b.c.
Maxim Demin (Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg)
Beyond Discipline? The Professionalization of Academic Philosophy at Russian Imperial Universities
Alexander Dmitriev (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
New Strategies of Interdisciplinary Publishing in Russia on the Eve of the Great War
Dušan Radunović (Durham University)
The Emergence of Modern Scientific Communities in Late-1910s and Early-1920s Russia: The Cases of OPOIAZ and the Moscow Linguistic Circle

11.00 – 11.30 Coffee break

11.30 – 13.00 Panel III: Law
Chair: t.b.c.
Elizaveta Blagodeteleva (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
Where Legal Theory Meets Legal Practice: Law Professors and Sworn Attorneys in the Russian Empire
Jakob Zollmann (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin)
Tsarist Russia’s International Lawyers: The Professionalization of an Elite
Juliette Cadiot (EHESS, Paris)
Soviet Lawyers: An Ordinary Profession?

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 15.30 Panel IV: Human Science
Chair: Holger Maehle (Durham University)
Kenneth M. Pinnow (Allegheny College)
From All Sides: Soviet Criminology, Interdisciplinary Knowledge, and the Search for a Unified Understanding of Criminality in the 1920s
Vera Shibanova (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Pavel Blonsky’s Biogenetic Approach in Paedology: Interdisciplinarity under the Banner of Marxism
Frances Bernstein (Drew University)
Battle Scars: Fighting for the Bodies of Disabled Veterans

15.30 – 16.00 Tea break

16.00 – 17.30 Panel V: Geography
Chair: t.b.c.
Nick Baron (University of Nottingham)
Identities, Interests, Lobbies: Professions and Disciplines in Soviet Cartography, 1918-1953
Victoria Donovan (University of St Andrews)
Khrushchev’s Kraevedy: From ‘Motley Crew’ to Mass Organisation
Jonathan Oldfield (University of Birmingham)
Soviet Climate Science: An Interdisciplinary Endeavour
19.30 Reception & Dinner at Castle College

Sunday 21 September 2014
09.30 – 11.00 Panel VI: Technology & Education
Chair: t.b.c.
Karl Hall (Central European University, Budapest)
The Dawn of ‘Industrio-Physics’ in Leningrad (and Berlin): Abram Joffe, Michael Polanyi, and the Diffusion of Laboratory Experience
Roman Abramov (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
The Scientific-Technical Revolution (STR) and the Professionalization of Computer Engineers in the USSR
Mikhail Sokolov (European University at St Petersburg)
Governing the Status Commons: The Strain between Professional/Disciplinary and Higher Education Ecologies in Russia

11.00 – 11.30 Coffee break

11.30 – 13.00 Round Table
Andy Byford (Durham University)
Summing up: Interdisciplinary and Inteprofessional Relations in Russian History
General Discussion
Closing Statements
13.00 Lunch

Full details are available here, including the conference programme, full abstracts, and the list of participants.
On how to register, see here.

Andy Byford
MLAC, Durham University
Elvet Riverside, New Elvet
Durham, DH1 3JT
United Kingdom
e-mail: andy.byford@durham.ac.uk