KEAC-BSR

Busy days for the KEAC-BSR consortium. Several “knowledge exchangers” join the wonderful line-up at the conference “Dealing with the Past in the Black Sea Region: History, Memory, and Patrimony” (see below for the program). If you happen to be in Bucharest next week (June 29-30) join us at the “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History! Furthermore, we highly recommend the newest issue of the “Balkanistic Forum” (2022/2) on the “Secret and Public Secret”, available via CEEOL or below.

If you happen to be in Skopje next Tuesday (31 May 2022), join us for the book presentation of “Migration, Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures. Europe and the Black Sea Region until World War I” with editor Biljana Ristovska-Josifovska!

And looking back at this year’s ‘Balkanistic Forum’ at SW-University Blagoevgrad (19-20 May 2022, ‘Secret and Public Secret’), where we had wonderful presentations of the most recent KEAC-BSR publications on the Interwar Black Sea Region or Women in Science.

It is with great pain and heavy hearts that we have to let you know that our project’s coordinator, Prof. Karl Kaser, passed away in April 2022.

Karl Kaser, one of the most prominent and proficient names in the field of Southeastern European History, has been the heart, the brain and the backbone of KEAC-BSR and leaves behind an oeuvre that has inspired and will inspire generations of scholars dealing with the wider Black Sea Region. His last book on Femininities and Masculinities in the Digital Age. Realia and Utopia in the Balkans and South Caucasus was published only last year while the introduction to his 2020-Festschrift gives a glimpse into his multi-faceted work.

It has been a privilege to work with Karl Kaser on knowledge exchange in the Black Sea Region and the entire consortium will miss him dearly. RIP.

And here is another one! Edited by Milena Angelova (SWU Blagoevgrad) and Sergii Glebov (Odessa NU), this book seeks to open the floor for debates on forms of knowledge exchange and academic cultures within the BSR and beyond in the interwar period. Throughout its thirteen chapters, it investigates the interrelations of the geopolitical transformation of the BSR after WW I and knowledge and cultural exchanges between and within the region and Western Europe in a time of complex imperial and post-imperial relations. The contributing authors shed light on a broad variety of issues from, among others, interwar ethnography in Soviet Armenia, the cinematographic production in the Southern Caucasus of the 1920s and 1930s, to the increasing access of women to science and culture, and the development of Romanian National Museums between western influences and local particularities. The book is part of our six-volume series on “Knowledge exchange and academic cultures in the humanities. Europe and the Black Sea Region”, as available on our website (https://blacksearegion.eu/interwarknowledge/) and via Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/6402891)

We’re more than happy to share another KEAC-BSR-publication with you as the new issue of ‘Balkanistic Forum’ (edited by Nurie Muratova and Kristina Popova) has just come out and it’s a beauty. In twelve papers, the contributors shed light on “biographies, barriers, and self-fulfillment” of women in science in the Black Sea Region. As always, the volume is openly accessible on our website: Nurie Muratova and Kristina Popova (eds.): Women in Science in Times of Changes: Biographies, Barriers, Self-Fulfillment.

The aim of the volume is to present the place of women in education, science and exchange of knowledge in the complicated and politically contradictive world of the Black Sea Region in the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries, revealing the particular cultural, social and political context. The aim is to underline the role of women scholars in changing the traditional male domination in scientific worlds, discourses, and institutions. There are stories of significant female personalities from Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine in the fields of science and knowledge production through their biographical trajectories and their struggle for education and recognition.

There are biographical papers but also conceptual contributions and papers which are focused on the intersection of different forms of inequalities (gender, class, religion etc.) as well as on the role of different women networks (informal, international, and others) for overcoming barriers in their life and scientific carriers and surviving political turbulences.

We’re thrilled to have a new publication in our hands and on our screens: “Migration, Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures. Europe and the Black Sea Region until World War I”, edited by Biljana Ristovska-Josifovska, has just come out! It is available on an open access basis on our website and via Zenodo.

It addresses issues on movement as a base of knowledge exchange, shedding new light on knowledge policies and the establishment of national training facilities, with specific emphasis on the humanities. Austrian, Russian, Macedonian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Azerbaijani scholars, coming from geographically, politically and culturally distant academic fields, investigate the complex modes of interaction at macro level and micro level through various disciplines, methodologies and approaches.

The book investigates the exchange of knowledge and science in correlation with the population movements across borders, scientific advancements conveyed through the transfer of objects and the exchange of knowledge in practical contexts between the Black Sea Region and Western Europe. It initiates research on the development of Black Sea Region academic cultures, developed through the exchange of knowledge through wars and migrations. Each section intends to position a distinguished problematic: crossroads of migration and knowledge exchange, role of emigration communities in the exchange of knowledge and ideas, visualization between art and introduction of scientific achievements, as well as migration and national academic facilities. This publication contributes the first systematic research of the exchange of knowledge in academic cultures through migration, thereby analysing the role of migration in the processes of the emergence of independent and semi-independent academic cultures, as well as those under foreign domination in the early 20^th century until World War I within the Black Sea Region.

You read Bulgarian? Then we have a fantastic publication for you: The sixth volume of the series “DocWoment”, published with University of Blagoevgrad Press, addresses “Women beyond the Archive. Invisible Histories of Women in Bulgaria”. You can find the open access e-book right here.

Written by Nurie Muratova, the monograph focuses on researching the archives of and for women in Bulgaria. The proposed model encompasses the chronological framework of the period of the communist regime and considers the historical conditions of the founding of the State Historical Archives in 1951. The object of the study are the archives of women vis a vis the traditional historical archives. Nurie Muratova looks to outline the presence of the history of women and women’s lifes in the documental heritage. The purpose of the research is to define the models of archive availability in Bulgaria, related to the history of women and more specifically to define the historiographic situation in the sphere of researching gender and the history of women.

The full program for our sixth and final conference is now available here. The hybrid conference will take place both offline and online and if you wish to take part, please get in touch with Prof. Eudochia Saharneanu (saharneanu.eudochia@gmail.com) at Moldova State University to get the latest information on how to register.

We are already looking forward to discussing “Knowledge Exchange in the Post-Socialist Black Sea Region: From Closed Systems to Dialogue” with you!