News and Events

SYMPOSIUM

Revolution and Peace in Eastern Europe – Marking the Centenary of the end of the First World War

Wednesday, 25 April 2018 1 pm until 4.30 pm (Sir Duncan Rice Library, Seminar Room 224, second floor)

Schedule

13.00 Welcome and Introduction

13.10-13.50 Frank Hadler (University Leipzig/GWZO): The Czechoslovak agenda at the Paris Peace Conference

13.50-14.30 Robert Frost (Aberdeen): Oskar Halecki and the vision of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the First World War

14.30-15.00 Coffee/Tea break

15.00-15.40 Vladimir Unkovski-Korica (Glasgow): Nationalist agendas and the Voivodina at the end of the First World War

15.40-16.30 Discussion/Roundtable, led by Professor Karin Friedrich and Professor Tony Heywood

Conferences and events in 2017:

• Home Abroad: Lost and Found
  Events during the University of Aberdeen’s Social Science Week, sponsored by the AHRC’s Being Human funding. Members of Aberdeen’s Polish Association and researchers from the University of Aberdeen led lively discussions about the place of migration and identity in modern Scotland.

  Tuesday 21 November 2017 – Heritage: lost, found and reclaimed
  Dr David Worthington (University of Highlands and Islands): “Migration is no one-way street: Scots in Poland’s History and Memory”
  Aileen Orr (author): “Lost and Found in the Second World War: The Scottish Dimension of Wojtek the Polish Bear Hero”
  Professor Ulli Kockel (Herriot-Watt University Edinburgh): Finding lost homelands in the frontier: German heritage in Lithuania’s Memellan
  
  Friday 24 November 2017 – Never Home Abroad? Identity and Citizenship in a post-Brexit UK
  Dr Emilia Piętka-Nykaza (University of the West of Scotland): “Identity politics and political opportunities: Poles in post-Brexit Scotland”
  Dr Francesca Stella (University of Glasgow): ‘Home is where the heart is: LGBT migrants in Scotland’
  Dr Elwira Grossman (University of Glasgow): ‘Staging Migration or Polish Identities in Transit’

• Commemorating the Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution
  ACREEH in Cooperation with the Friends of the Library
  Wed 8 November 2017, 19.30-21.00 in the Seminar Room of the Special Collection Centre, Sir Duncan Rice Library, Lower floor
  Professor Tony Heywood: Leith, Gallipoli and the Russian Revolution
  Professor Paul Dukes:  Aberdeen and the Russian Revolution
  Followed by a TV mini-documentary: Russia under Soviet Power and a drinks reception

Conferences and events in 2016:

• Still Home Abroad After Brexit?
  A Roundtable on Polish Migrants in Scotland after the EU referendum
  Place: Aberdeen Science Centre, 179 Constitution Street,  Aberdeen AB24 5TU
  Time: Monday 7 November 2016 at 7 pm
  How does the EU referendum result affect the Polish community in Scotland, and what are people’s responses?  Integration of Poles has been a success story, and Scotland’s economy has benefited from migration. People born in Poland have overtaken all other foreign nationalities in the UK for the first time. Academics and practitioners offer their insights and propose a public discussion of the main issues that Polish citizens face after the referendum.
  Prof. Karin Friedrich (University of Aberdeen)  leads the discussion with Magda Czarnecka (Project Development Manager Feniks Counselling Services), Anna Ruszel  (Regional Director Scotland at International Business Club & Risk Management) and Dr Chris Moreh (Research Fellow at the Centre for Population Change at the University of Southampton). 25 November 2016 (Floor 7, Sir Duncan Rice Library, Aberdeen University)

• War and Diplomacy in the late Seventeenth Century
  International Conference to mark the launch of the last volume of Patrick Gordon’s Diary, in conjunction with RIISS and CEMS
  10.00 -10.30 Commemoration by Bishop Hugh Gilbert, OSB, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Huntly Street
  Colloquium (Floor 7, Sir Duncan Rice Library, Aberdeen University)
  11.00-13.00 War and Diplomacy in the late Seventeenth Century
  Prof. Brian Davies (University of Texas in San Antonio):  Infantry command and engineering in the Russo-Turkish Wars, 1677-1696: Gordon and the "Caledonian Phalanx"
  Dr Mindaugas Šapoka (IHR London): Augustus II’s accession to the Polish throne and Jan Bokiey’s legation to Russia in 1697-1698
  14.00 – 16.00 Patrick Gordon and his Diary
  Prof. Mikhail Ryzhenkov (Director of the Russian State Archives): The Diary: a technical analysis
  Dr  Fedosov (Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences): Portraits
  Dr Allan Kennedy (Manchester) Discussant
  16.30-17.30 Keynote Lecture by Prof. Paul Bushkovitch (Yale), chaired by Prof. Robert Frost FBA (Aberdeen)
  17.30-18.30 Wine Reception

Conferences and events in 2014-2015:

• Linking Northern Communities socially, culturally and economically: East European Immigration in Scotland
  Prof. Dr. Karin Friedrich as Principal Investigator, and a team consisting of academics from the University of Aberdeen and Herriott-Watt University Edinburgh, as well as members from migrant organisations in Scotland, have been awarded £ 18,000 for a programme of knowledge transfer events to take place between October 2014 and March 2015.
  
  This programme will focus on the importance of understanding social, cultural and economic parameters of integration of migrants into Scottish society, and how awareness of common links of heritage and its influence on identity can improve and ease the integration of migrants into their new environment. The comparison of different migration waves over time, as well as the comparison of experiences of different groups of East European migrants will facilitate a dialogue between academics, policy-makers, charities and migrant communities and ensure a better coordination of their endeavours at community-level.
  
  Our goal is to apply models and develop resources for future policy-making and improve understanding of the potential social, cultural and economic benefits that could be derived from the integration of these communities.  Novel approaches will include outreach to schools which are under pressure from large numbers of Polish and other East European pupils, a public seminar on 'Transnational Biographies' of people that shaped a shared East European-Scottish heritage into the present, policy papers for MSPs in the cross-party group on Poland in the Scottish Parliament, seminars including the business community on particular features of the East European migrant market, and "Community Cafes" on the sustainability of business and tourism from Eastern Europe to Scotland.
  
  Conferences and events in 2013-2014:
• War and Warfare in Northern Europe, 1550–1721
  ACREEH-sponsored seminar on(Aberdeen), 2^nd March 2013
• Union & Disunion: Comparing Political Unions in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World, 1350-1801
  Newberry Library, Chicago. Part sponsored by ACREEH, 19–21 September 2013
• Culture and Union. A Comparison of the British/Irish and the Polish-Lithuanian Unions 1386 –1863
  The Burn, Edzell, Aberdeenshire. Co-sponsored by ACREEH, 5–7 September 2014

Conferences and events in 2011-2012:

• CEMS Research Seminar
  Martyna Mirecka (University of St. Andrews), "Poland-Lithuania as the bulwark of Christendom, 22 February 2012
• ACREEH Research Seminar
  Wang Li (Nankai University), "The Northern Expansion of the Chinese Empire and the Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1789", 27 April 2012
• A state so oddly constituted? The Sejm and the political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1493–1795’
  Robert Frost, The Kościuszko Foundation, New York, 13 November 2012

Conferences and events in 2010-2011:

• Conference: Between History and Past: Soviet Legacy as the Traumatic Object of Contemporary Russian Culture
  University of Sheffield
  Amy Bryzgel 'From Crimania to Reservoir Dog: Exploring Memory, Trauma and Identity through Performance Art in Post-Soviet Russia', 30-31 October 2010
• Scottish Parliament, in connection with the Jacobite World exhibition mounted by the University of Aberdeen
  Robert Frost, 'The Sobieski-Stuart Marriage and the Jacobite World', 10 November 2010
• American Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Annual Conference, panel on military culture
  Robert Frost, 'The Death of Military Culture? The Citizen Army and the Military Failure of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1648-1717', 18 November 2010
• Robert Frost, 'The Ethiopian and the Elephant: Queen Louise Marie Gonzaga and Queenship in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1645&-1667'
  University of Illinois at Chicago, 7 March 2011
• Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Aberdeen
  Robert Frost, 'On Unions', 24 March 2011
• University of Aberdeen, Shared Planet Society
  Robert Frost, 'The Forgotten Union: Poland-Lithuania-Ukraine-Belarus, 1386-1569-1795-2011', 25 March 2011
• British Association for the Advancement of Slavic and East European Studies Annual Conference, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
  Amy Bryzgel, 'Limit Cases: Artistic Controversies in Postmodern Art East and West', 2-4 April 2011
• Recuperating the Invisible Past Conference, The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia
  Amy Bryzgel, 'Performance Art East and West', 17-18 May 2011