Cities and Urban Experience: Events

2008
2007

2008 Events

The theme of CEELBAS Cities seminar series in 2008:

“Everyday life under socialism: conformity, material culture and cultural practices”

May 2008
Bulgarian Studies Day: The ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ in present-day –Bulgaria
Organizers: Dr Ger Duijzings, Dr Iliya Nedin, Dr Meike Wulf

22 October 2008
17:15 (SSEES, Room 433)
CEELBAS seminar: on Border Cities (co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Central Europe)
Kaja Sirok (University of Nova Gorica)
"Borderland Collective Memories and Identities: The Case Study of Nova Gorica/Gorizia"
Screening of: "My Border" (Directed by: N. Velušček, A. Medved, 2002)
Discussant: Dr Ger Duijzings
18:45 wine reception

14 November 2008
09:30 - 14:30 (Anatomy Gavin de Beer LT)
CEELBAS seminar: Writing spatial history
Prof. Aleida Assmann (University of Konstanz) 'History Takes Place'
Prof. Rolf Lindner (HU Berlin) 'Habitus of the City' - abstract
Chair: Meike Wulf (UCL SSEES)
13:00 - 14:30 lunch reception (Masaryk Room)
full details

12-13 December 2008
Second CEELBAS Conference
Cities panel: "Capturing Urban Experiences"

2007 Events

Theme for the first CEELBAS Cities seminar series in 2007:

Counter Memories, Repression, Dissent, and Resistance in the Central Eastern European City

Cities function as ‘sites of cultural memory’. In Central and Eastern Europe the function of repression has an important function too: the manipulation of urban space has been instrumental in attempting to break with the past. How did the Socialist city break with an unwanted historical legacy after 1945? And how are cities breaking with the communist past? A comparison of cases of ‘forced amnesia’ through the elimination and neutralisation of urban sites of cultural memory during the period of post-war reconstruction with the post-1989 period of re-building of post-communist cites represents an important topic for research. Capital cities during state socialism were also spaces of dissent and resistance. What were the ways in which the highly ideologised public sphere in cities was subverted? Where did counter-memories find semi-public spaces? Were oppositional currents visible in the city landscape?

February 2007 Roundtable: Cities and Urban Experience in Eastern Europe

The roundtable event was the first in a series of events. Through structured discussion with scholars working in a range of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences at UCL and in London, it helped to identify new approaches to and perspectives on the research of cities and urban experience in Eastern Europe.

Dr Matthew Gandy (Geographer UCL Urban Laboratory)
Dr Claire Colomb, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Dr Katarzyna Zechenter, UCL SSEES
Dr Ger Duijzings, UCL SSEES
Dr Egbert Klautke, UCL SSEES
Prof. George Kolankiewicz, UCL SSEES
Dr Timothy Beasly-Murray, UCL SSEES
Dr Meike Wulf, UCL SSEES

March 2007: CEELBAS Seminar

Dr Ella Chmielewska (University of Edinburgh)
“Re-drawing Urban Surfaces / Correcting Memories' - A Close Reading of the Visual Landscape of Warsaw”

April 2007: Inaugural CEELBAS Conference
Key themes of the Panel on Cities and Urban Experiences:

• Concepts of (post-) modernity and post-communism in relation to the urban environment of Central East European cities.
• Globalization and the Central East European city: in what way are post-communist cities in the process of becoming global cities?
• Social processes in the city (crime, conflict, forms of exclusion, etc.),
• Innovative approaches to the urban experience (i.e. anthropological, sociological, and micro-historical).
• Role and influence of the media on the construction of the urban experience

Prof. Göran Therborn (SCAS, Cambridge): “Time and Space of Eastern European Cities”
Prof. Svetlana Stephenson (London Metropolitan): "Creating local orders in the global cities: youth violent groups in Russia"
Dr Philipp Müller (UCL SSEES): “Enchanting modernities: sensations of crime in Berlin 1900”

May 2007: Joint CEELBAS Seminar on Memory and Repression: Social Conflict in Eastern European Cities

Dr Sandor Horvarth (Institute of History, Hungary)  “On Hooliganism and Social Conflict in the communist era city”Prof Hilary Pilkington (Warwick) “Russian Youth in post-Soviet Vorkuta”Dr Peter Duncan (discussant)

May 2007

“Hot and Cold Sites of Memory in Contemporary Estonia“, Presentation at the Department of Political Science, Belgrade.

June 2007: One-Day Workshop on Contested Monuments, Underground Archives, Sanitized Memorialization in the East European City’

Dr James Mark (University of Exeter) "Containing Fascism: Post-Communist Histories at Occupation and Terror Museums"Dr Ewa Ochman (University of Manchester)“Contested War Monuments in Poland”Prof. Mary Fulbrook (UCL) “Memory and History in Berlin” Prof. Istvan Rev (CEU, OSA) "House of Terror in Budapest"Dr Meike Wulf and Dr Kasia Murawska-Muthesius (Birkbeck), discussants 

June 2007

“A Contextualization of the Contested Bronze Soldier Monument in Estonia‘”, Presentation at CREES Annual Conference at Cumberland Lodge

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