Conference Venue: Birkbeck, Malet Street, MAL 540
Saturday 1 June 2019
Session 1, 11:00-13:00
Making, Breaking and Remaking Ethnicity in Interwar Eastern Europe
Moderator: Professor Julia Richers (University of Bern)
Christopher Wendt (Institute of Political History, Budapest), Formulating Germanness: ‘Minority Making’ among the Banat Swabians from Dualist Hungary to Interwar Romania
Zećir Ramčilović (Institute of National History, Skopje), The Position of Bosniaks in Vardar Macedonia within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia between the World Wars
Andrea Carteny (Sapienza University, Rome), The Szekler Question in Greater Romania: Blood and Language in the Struggle for National Belonging
Jonna Rock (Humboldt University, Berlin), Negotiating Jewishness in Interwar Yugoslavia
Lunch break, 13:00-14:00
Session 2, 14:00-16:00
Preservation and Consolidation through Language, Education and the Press
Moderator: Dr Bojana Petric (Birkbeck, University of London)
Branko Šuštar (Historical Association of Slovenia and Slovenian School Museum, Ljubljana), From Lessons in German as a National Language to Schooling in a Minority Language. Views on Minority Education in the Yugoslav part of Slovenia, 1918-1941
Anca Filipovici (Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Cluj-Napoca), National Education and Zionist Dream in Interwar Romania: The Case of the Youth Organisations Straja Țării and Maccabi
Mattias Battis (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna), ‘Spreading the Word’ – The Appeal and Provisions of Language and Educational Autonomy for German and Persian Speaking Minorities in the Early Soviet Union
Stephan Stach (Polin: Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw), ‘The Polish-Ukrainian Bulletin as a Forum for Debate and an Endeavour to Build Mutual Trust’
Coffee break: 16:00-16:30
Session 3, 16:30-18:30
The Assimilation and Repression of National Minorities
Moderator: Professor Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia, Norwich)
Anna Novikov (University of Greifswald), ‘Maurer’s Children’. Nationalization Processes in Interwar Polish Silesia
Oana-Maria Mitu (Lower Danube University, Galati), State versus Minority Identity in an Interwar Nation-Building Project: The Story of German Settlers in Southern Bessarabia under Romanian Rule
Agnieszka Smelkovska (University of California, Berkeley), German Ancestors and Soviet Passports: the Black sea German Community in the Interwar Period
Cristina Stoica (Western University, London, Canada), ‘Romanization’ and the Creation of Zones of Allocation: Romanian Policies Targeting Roma during the Interwar Period
Session 4, 18:45-20:00
Keynote address, Professor Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia, Norwich),
Eastern Hercegovina after the Habsburgs: Trebinje 1918-1941
Venue: Birkbeck, Malet Street, MAL 532
Sunday, 2 June 2019
Session 5, 9:30-10:45
Keynote address, Professor Julia Richers (University of Bern)
Session 6, 11:00-12:30
Minorities as Objects of State Policy
Moderator: Dr Frederick Anscombe (Birkbeck, University of London)
Börries Kuzmany (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna), The minority Ministries for Poles, Jews and Russians in the Ukrainian people’s Republic and their Efforts to Establish National-Personal Autonomy
Sebahattin Abdurrahman (Middlesex University, London), Kemalist reforms and their Influence of the Identity Shaping of the Western Thrace Turks
Giuseppe Motta (Sapienza University, Rome), Rejection and Integration in Transylvania. The Magyar response to the Treaty of Trianon
Lunch break, 12:30-13:30
Session 7, 13:30-14:45
Social and Economic Life between the Wars
Moderator: Dr Francis King (University of East Anglia, Norwich)
Katja Wezel (University of Göttingen), ‘United for Economic Revival? Riga’s Baltic Germans and Latvian Nation-Building after WW1
Oliver Panichi (University of Teramo), ‘Give us back our Church’: how to be Catholic and Italian in Yugoslav Dalmatia (1918-1920s)
Klara Volarić (Loughborough University), ‘Our Turks do not Feel Like a National Minority’: Macedonian Turks in Interwar Yugoslavia
Session 8, 15:00-16:30
Contested Identities in the Political and Public Arena
Moderator: Dr Bojan Aleksov (University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies)
Stefan Guzvica (University of Regensburg), A Legacy Erased: Germans in the Yugoslav Communist Movement
Mart Kuldkepp (University College London), The Political Choices and Outlooks of the Estonian Swedish Minority in Interwar Estonia
Vera Volkmann (Herder-Institute, Marburg), Minorities, Identities and Loyalties: The Case of Interwar Daugavpils (Latvia)
Coffee Break: 16:30-16:50
Session 9, 16:50-18:20
Lived Experiences in a Transnational Context
Moderator: Dr Natalya Chernyshova (University of Winchester)
Keith Harrington (Maynooth University), Different Experiences? Comparing Romanian and Soviet Policies towards their Moldovan Minorities, 1924-1939
Alexandr Voronovici (Higher School of Economics, Moscow), The Comintern and National Minorities in the Contested Borderlands of the Soviet Union’s Western neighbours during the 1920s
Petru Negura (Free International University, Chisinau), Nation-State Building and Primary Schooling of Ethnic Minorities in Romanian Bessarabia and Soviet Transnistria during the Interwar Period
Closing remarks, 18:20-18:45
Contested Minorities in the ‘New Europe’: National Identity from the Baltics to the Balkans, 1918-1939 