Current Projects
- Contemporary and cultural history
Using its extensive archive, which contains well in excess of 150,000 Samizdat documents and more than 300 private archives, the Research Centre organised a series of large-scale exhibitions titled Samizdat. Alternative Culture in Central and Eastern Europe from the 1960s to the 1980s. The exhibition in Berlin was opened by the lord mayor of Budapest and former human rights activist Gábor Demszky, that in Prague by the presidents of Germany and Czechoslovakia Johannes Rau and Václav Havel, in Brussels by the EU commissioner Günter Verheugen and in Budapest by the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. The exhibitions were received enthusiastically by the public. In Prague alone there were 75,000 visitors.
The Research Centre has built on this success by putting together another exhibition Counterviews. Photographs of the Political and Cultural Opposition in Eastern Europe 1956-1989. It takes the form of a touring exhibition which at present travels throughout Europe.
Alongside comprehensive individual research projects on dissent and society throughout Eastern and Central Eastern Europe, a joint research association funded by the Volkswagen Foundation has started its work in collaboration with institutes in Moscow, Warsaw, Poznan, Prague and Budapest on the topic ‘The other Europe – the 1960s-1980s. Dissent in Politics and Society; Cultural Alternatives. Contributions to a Comparative History’. In this way, the Research Centre in cooperation with other German universities and partner organizations in the USA and Western Europe will become an important centre for the study of the contemporary history of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
At the moment a database is being created for the unique collections within the Bremen archive, which on account of its use of five different languages resembles a large-scale pilot project. A regular series of publications giving an overview of the contents of the archive will be forthcoming in 2008.
- Studies of the present - politics, economics and culture
In this area, the most notable research projects have in the past few years dealt with economic culture and informal politics. The topics investigated included taxation, the role of trust in business relations, the political influence of companies and the development of corporate governance. The majority of these projects were made possible through third-party funds.
Other recent areas of research (some of which were comparative) include the development of a new state symbolism in Russia and Slovakia, processes of the construction of identity and the politics of history in Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. In addition, there are individual studies on various countries and regions.
A new focal point is the integration of the former socialist EU-member states in the decision-making process of the European Union. Above all, it is concerned with the role of civic interest and lobby group. Within the Sixth Framework Programme for Research of the European Union, the institute is a team leader in the integrated project, which is headed by the European University Institute in Florence. A further third-party funded research project investigates how the Polish, Czech and Slovakian trade unions cope with EU governance.
Since 2000 the Research Centre has organized conferences for young scholars specializing in Eastern Europe. At the moment this is funded by the Otto-Wolff Foundation. In addition the Research Center organizes summer schools Changing Europe, sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation. The first one took place in 2006 and selected contributions have been published. The aim of the summer schools is to bring together a select group of doctoral students from throughout the world and assist their integration into the research community of East European studies. Over 40 academics of international renown are involved in various functions under the supervision of the Research Centre in the work of the summer school.
Read more about this topic: Research Centre For East European Studies
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