“Journeys” - The 41st Annual and International Conference of the Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies

Conference venue: Moore Institute, NUI Galway, Ireland
Period: 4–6 May 2017
Deadline for submitting abstracts: 16 December 2016

IARCEES is committed to providing a forum for scholars of Russian, Central and East European Studies in Ireland and abroad. We now invite proposals for twenty-minute papers or panels of three to four papers, which address the IARCEES conference theme for 2017, “Journeys”. The conference will also feature a dedicated ‘work-in-progress’ strand for Irish-based scholars who are encouraged to submit proposals for papers or panels on any aspect of their ongoing research in all relevant disciplines, including linguistics, literary studies, sociology, history and political science.

The upcoming centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 reminds us of the famous journey made by Lenin in a sealed train from Switzerland to the Finland Station in Petrograd. While perhaps the most fateful journey in modern political history, this was just one of many journeys that shaped the history and society of Russia and central and eastern Europe. The people of this region, as elsewhere, engaged in journeys for many different reasons, including to fight wars, to trade goods, to colonise territory, to gain knowledge, to serve penal sentences, to worship and to relax. Whatever the impetus, journeys into, out of and around this region led to encounters with unfamiliar or less familiar territories, peoples and institutions, prompting a range of intellectual and emotional responses. This conference seeks to explore the ways in which journeys functioned as a motor of change in the past and whether journeys can serve as a useful metaphor for processes of learning and self-development. It thus contributes to the new field of mobilities studies, which highlights the central role of movement and travel in the human experience.

Potential topics for the themed part of the conference include:

Scholars from all disciplines and at all career stages are eligible to apply. 
Please email your paper or panel proposals, limited to 300 words per paper, together with a biographical note of 100 words, to roisin.healy@nuigalway.ie  by 16 Dec. 2016.

Dr. Róisín Healy, Lecturer in European History, School of Humanities, NUI Galway and Vice-President of the IARCEES, 2016–17