Following a new strategic partnership between CEELBAS and The Russian Media House publishing company, the first in a projected series of articles covering the expertise of CEELBAS partners appeared in the UK Russian-language journal ‘New Style’ in January 2010 (issue 79). In this article Dr Maria Rubins of UCL School of Slavonic Studies presented her research on Russian Émigré Prose, discussing the various cultural-linguistic complexities faced by bilingual Russian émigré writers past and present, and their difficulties gaining recognition and acceptance whilst working within a foreign literary milieu. With particular reference to Russian émigré publications in interwar France, Dr Rubins described her work as an editor and publisher of these rare and often long out-of-print texts, highlighting the orthographic and technical challenges of such work. The original article (in Russian) is available here.

Meeting the challenges of the next decade: LBAS and UK strategic research investment

The five Language-Based Area Studies centres welcomed supporters from Parliament, business, the media, diplomacy and international organisations to the British Academy on Wedensday February 24th to celebrate the success of the UK Funding Councils’ Language-Based Area Studies (LBAS) initiative.

Papers are solicited for a conference on 'Diasporas and Cosmopolitanism in Central and Eastern Europe: From Theory to Practice' to be held at UCL School of Slavonic Studies in Setpember 2010. For full details, contacts, and deadlines please click here.

St Antony's and Wolfson Colleges, University of Oxford

Wednesday 17th March – Thursday 18th March 2010

On 25-26 February 2010, the L'viv Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (www.lvivcenter.org) will host the first international workshop to be sponsored by CEELBAS. Dr Robert Pyrah, CEELBAS postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University, will coordinate the Workshop together with Tarik Amar, Academic Director at the L’viv Center.

The CEELBAS Network Project workshop on 'Methods of Memory Studies: Russia and Eastern Europe' held at the University of Cambridge in December 2008 has led to Project Leader Alexander Etkind submitting a successful bid to the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme Call under the Cultural Dynamics: Inheritance and Identity theme.

The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies is offering 3 scholarships at the level of Home-EU fees for study on the MRes in East European Studies to start from 1 October 2010 and to run for two years in each case. The scholarships aim to continue UCL SSEES support for the research and training programme of the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS). Applications must show engagement with the CEELBAS research themes for 2010-16 (click on further information below for details):

The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) is offering 3 scholarships at the level of Home-EU fees for PhD Research to start from 1 October 2010 and to run for three years in each case. The scholarships will continue UCL SSEES support for the research and training programme of the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS), which is led by UCL SSEES. In addition to meeting standard conditions for admission to UCL, priority will be given to applicants who demonstrate how their intended project will take forward research that meets strategic priorities identified by CEELBAS for the period 2010-2016 (click on further information below for details).

INTERNATIONAL ELITES AND THE FORMATION OF POLITICAL IDENTITY IN POST SOVIET SPACE

Under the auspices of the Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies (Ceelbas) a workshop will be organised at Cambridge University on 11 June 2010.

Following the completion of a CEELBAS Network Project run by Marta Jenkala and Christopher Moseley to investigate how the teaching and testing of East European and Slavonic languages at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) maps onto the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), a summary of the project and a report on its findings and conclusions is available here. Further project details can be found in the Research section of the website. A presentation of the findings of the project, to which participants from across the CEELBAS Network will be invited, is being planned for Spring 2010 and will be publicised here.

University of Oxford, 24-26 September 2009

Held under the aegis of the British-Czech-Slovak Historians’ Forum (http://users.ox.ac.uk/~bcsforum/index.html) this interdisciplinary worksop, part-funded by CEELBAS under its Network Projects scheme, attracted a total of about 60 participants to the History Faculty at Oxford with 18 half-hour papers by historians or academic specialists from six countries. A Conference Report is available here.

The Discipline of Russian and East European Studies, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, at the University of Manchester is offering a Graduate Teaching Fellowship for candidates who want to pursue doctoral research from 1 September 2010 for three years. The financial support offered to the successful candidate is as follows:

Following completion of a pioneering CEELBAS-funded language project to create materials to develop the language skills of heritage speakers of Polish, the ‘Polish for Foreigners’ online language course is now available at www.polishforforeigners.org.

The first of a series of workshops under the umbrella theme Situating Culture is taking place at the University of Warwick from December 12^th-13^th 2009.

RUSSIA ON EDGE: RECLAIMING THE PERIPHERY IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN CULTURE

Friday 11 to Saturday 12 December 2009

International Elites and the Formation of Political Identity in Post Soviet Space

The first of two CEELBAS-funded workshops designed to explore the relationships between the formation of national identity and the structure of domestic and foreign elites, and to discover the role of such elites in defining identity and citizenship, took place on Friday November 27^th at the University of Cambridge. The workshop outlined domestic and external influences on identity formation. Papers addressed the ways in which internationalization of economics and politics interact with domestic interests to shape national identity.

Following several successful UK workshops and trips to Russia, the Russian Archives Training scheme is organising a one week trip to Moscow for research students based in the UK and overseas, in order to introduce them to working in the principal historical, literary and cultural archives used by scholars of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. The scheme is funded by CEELBAS and CRCEES, after a highly successful four-year pilot funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s ‘Collaborative Research Training Provision for Doctoral Students’ scheme.

A one-day international conference was held at the University of Oxford in June 2009 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the ‘bloodless’ democratic revolutions that spread from Poland’s Gdańsk shipyards across East-Central Europe. The conference was held under the patronage of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, with sponsorship from CEELBAS, the M. B. Grabowski Foundation, and support from St. Antony’s College. It was co-ordinated by Dr Robert Pyrah, the CEELBAS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Processes in East-Central Europe, with Filip Lachowski, President of the Oxford University Polish Society.

The postgraduate ethics workshop took place at SSEES on 23 September 2009. Its main aim was to bring together academics and postgraduate research students within REES to exchange ideas and experiences relating to ethical issues. This workshop was divided into three sessions, designed to address three key themes: ethics and statistical data; ethical issues arising during fieldwork and ethical issues in an era of institutional paranoia.

Spaces of Nationhood: Landscape and Identity after Communism

A letter emphasising the importance of interdisciplinarity across the social sciences and humanities was published in the Times Higher Education Supplement. The letter was written by CEELBAS Director Robin Aizlewood and signed by the Directors of all five Language Based Area Studies Centres.

Dr Felix Ciută (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies) has been awarded an ESRC/SSRC Collaborative Visiting Fellowship at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, in the Spring term 2010. At SAIS, Felix will conduct research on his project "Lily-Pad Geopolitics: Strategic Representations of Romania in the Global War on Terror".

On 12 and 13 June 2009, the Wider Europe network held a seminar in Bratislava in collaboration with CEELBAS, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Slovak Foreign Policy Association and the Comenius University. The principal focus of the conference was the impact of the new Member States on the making of the European Union’s policy towards its eastern neighbours and, in particular, their preferences for the Eastern Partnership.

The Centre is organising, across its Network, regular thematic and/or (inter-)disciplinary workshops including participation by international scholars and non-area specialists to take forward the research agenda. Please see CEELBAS network projects for further information.

Please see details of forthcoming CEELBAS events