(Preliminary) Program 2026

Thursday, October 8, 2026

HFB Auditorium C
HFB Conference Room II
HFB Conference Room III
OEI 101
OEI 105
OEI 121
OEI 301
OEI 302A
OEI 302B
OEI 323
OEI Auditorium A, 026
OSI UG 1
OSI UG 2
OSI UG 3
OSI UG 4
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:00
15:00
16:00
17:00
18:00
19:00
10:00 – 10:30 | Room: HFB Auditorium C

Opening Panel

Opening Panel
Gwendolyn Sasse, Günther M. Ziegler, Gabriele Freitag
10:30 – 11:30 | Room: HFB Auditorium C

Quo Vadis? Central and East European Studies after the End of History

Keynote speech
Marci Shore
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 101

Russia wartime transformation through the prism of ideologization

Paper Session
Katharina Bluhm, Matthew Blackburn, Tatiana Romashko, Ivan Fomin, Diana Planida
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room II

Two Zeitenwenden, One Europe: Germany, Poland and the New Landscape of Uncertainty and Insecurity

Round Table
Bastian Sendhardt, Jakub Bornio, Stefan Garsztecki, Agnieszka Łada-Konefał, Iwona Reichardt
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 302B

Tech, Media, and Control of the Digital Sphere

Paper Session
Nozima Saidova, Michael Rochlitz
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OSI UG 2

(Un)Certainties of Empire: Observation, Learning, and the Limits of Transfer in Eastern Anatolia, Southeastern and East-Central Europe, 1870s–1914

Paper Session
Jonas Kreienbaum, İlkay Yılmaz, Franziska Exeler
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OSI UG 4

Youth Mobilization

Paper Session
Vera Beloshitzkaya, Tamari Taralashvili, Ewa Cichocka, Svitlana Shevchenko
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 121

Diaspora, Memory and Contested Belonging

Paper Session
David Pergl, Elmira Muratova, Dominik Jakub Napiwodzki
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room III

Publishing on Eastern Europe and Eurasia in (Un)Certain Times: An Editors' Roundtable

Round Table
Fabian Burkhardt, Luca Anceschi, Félix Krawatzek, Katharina Kucher, Tomila Lankina
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 302A

Small State Responses (to Uncertainty) in the South Caucasus

Paper Session
David Matsaberidze, Doris Wydra, Beka Chedia, Kornely Kakachia, Sandro Tabatadze, Nika Gigauri
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OSI UG 3

War, Migration, and Living with (Un)Certainty

Paper Session
Kseniya Dziatlouskaya, Irina Meyer Olimpieva, Katharina Kleynmans, Isabel Hoffmann
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI Auditorium A, 026

Transformations of Social Capital under War, Displacement, and Decentralisation

Paper Session
Susann Worschech, Tetiana Kostiuchenko, Tetiana Lukeria, Volodymyr Vakhitov, Andrii Darkovich,
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 301

Coming to Terms with War Crimes as a Precondition for a Comprehensive and Lasting Peace in Ukraine

Paper Session
Lea Nina Sophia Pheiffer, Rainer Wedde, Yevhen Pysmenskyy, Tetiana Vilchyk
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 105

Authoritarian Adaptation, Populism and Social Control

Paper Session
Márk Stégmayer, Valerio Baćak, Tatsiana Chulitskaya, Max Steuer
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OSI UG 1

Alliance Politics and Public Opinion in Times of War: NATO’s Evolving Role in Central and Eastern Europe

Paper Session
Vytautas Kuokštis, Ángel Torres-Adán, Denis Ivanov, Jan Kofroň
12:00 – 13:30 | Room: OEI 323

Russian Wartime Migrants Uncertainties: Between Integration and Isolation

Paper Session
Tsypylma Darieva, Margarita Zavadskaya, Sophie Jaeger, Inta Mierina, Laura Innocenti, Tsypylma Darieva, Hakob Matevosyan
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OSI UG 1

The Field of Military History of Eastern Europe: Concepts, Methods, and Perspectives

Paper Session
Markus Wien, Markus Wien, Kristin Janeke, Sofya Anisimova, Luisa Eckert, Friedrich Asschenfeldt
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room III

Russophone Uncertainties. Studying post-2022 Russian-Speaking Communities in Global Contexts

Round Table
Miriam Finkelstein, Alessandro Achilli, Alina Jašina-Schäfer, Marco Puleri, Jan Zeller
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 105

Geopolitics and Governance in Central Asia

Paper Session
Zakiyeva Zhanat, Botagoz Sariyeva, Asel Doolotkeldieva
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room II

The Big Shift. Doing Historical Research in ‘Eastern Europe’ since 2022

Round Table
Maike Lehmann, Ruslana Bovhyria, Tamar Qeburia, Julia Lajus, Masha Cerovic
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 101

History, Ideology and Language

Paper Session
Helge Blakkisrud, Volodymyr Kulyk, Veronika Danilova, Tamas Dudlak
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 302B

New technologies of the souls. Russian corruption of the public sphere in the Age of AI

Paper Session
Jan Matti Dollbaum, Ulrich Schmid, Julius Schulte, Sophie Harper, Miras Tolepbergen
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OSI UG 4

The Logistics, Psychology, and Defense of Protest Movements

Paper Session
Endre Borbáth, Anna Fruhstorfer, Ismael Benkrama
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OSI UG 2

Nationalism and Nation Building

Paper Session
David Smrček, Tomáš Masař, Mikuláš Zvánovec, Claudia Snochowska Gonzalez
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 323

Russian Society's Responses to the War

Panel
Roman Smirnov, Dmitrii Kozmin, Guillaume Sauvé, Marina Yusupova-Ryder, Ilya Matveev, Oleg Zhuravlev
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OSI UG 3

Migration and War

Paper Session
Marina Perglová, Nadiya Ivanenko, Klaudia Kosicińska, Yulia Abibok
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI Auditorium A, 026

Civil Society and Resilience in Ukraine

Paper Session
Anna Romandash, Michael Dobbins, Kristina Kocyba, Kateryna Buchko, Olga Kutsenko, Natalia Tsybuliak
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 121

Security and memory in the Baltics

Paper Session
Matthew Blackburn, Félix Krawatzek, Violeta Davoliūtė, Hakob Matevosyan, Olga Jerjomina
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 301

European Future for Ukraine: Enlargement Scenarios, Political Challenges and Societal Aspirations

Paper Session
Yuliya Bidenko, Oleksiy Kandyuk, Oleksii Kolesnykov, Inna Volosevych, Lidiia Moskvych
15:00 – 16:30 | Room: OEI 302A

Foreign Policy in the South Caucasus

Paper Session
Maximilian Ohle, Erik Davtyan, Bidzina Lebanidze, Kornely Kakachia
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 105

Return of the Enigmas? Studying Elite Politics in Closed Authoritarian Regimes

Paper Session
Sebastian Hoppe, Franziska Barbara Keller, Fabian Burkhardt, Sebastian Hoppe, Jan Matti Dollbaum
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 323

Protecting Academia at Risk: Reflexions, Qualitative Fieldwork and Podcast

Round Table
Andrea Pető, Elena Triffan, Tania Arcimovich, Nadiya Kiss
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 301

The Role of Occupied "New Regions" in Wartime Ideologization of Russia and Ukraine

Paper Session
Matthew Blackburn, Tatiana Malyarenko, Georgiy Kasianov, Volodymyr Ishchenko
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 302A

Social movements and political traditions in times of uncertainty: Historical and contemporary interrogations from the South Caucasus

Paper Session
Zaal Andronikashvili, Katie Sartania, Tamar Qeburia, Veronika Pfeilschifter
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OSI UG 1

Security cooperation in setting of protracted conflicts: the EU, OSCE, and the future of confidence building

Paper Session
Stefan Wolff, Andrea Gawrich, Sabine von Löwis, Julia Langbein, Jean-Robert Jouanny
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 302B

Political economy in wartime Eurasia: Changing alignments, dependencies and models.

Paper Session
Katharina Bluhm, Jiayi Zhou, Ewa Dabrowska, Maja Savevska, Mihai Varga, Ilya Matveev
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI Auditorium A, 026

Thinking Locally, Acting Globally: Municipalities, Civil Society, and Diaspora in the War Response and Ukrainian Recovery

Paper Session
Susann Worschech, Oksana Mikheieva, Yuliya Bidenko, Tetyana Panchenko
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room II

Ukrainian society and legacies of war: challenges of empirical research

Round Table
Gwendolyn Sasse, Viktoria Sereda, Olga Onuch, Volodymyr Kulyk, Volodymyr Vakhitov
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 121

Memory under Construction: Narrating War in Real Time

Paper Session
Ewa Sułek, Tetiana Grebeniuk, Olena Zinenko, Mariia Rastvorova, Liudmyla Harmash
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OSI UG 3

Care Work, Migration and Families

Paper Session
Oleksandra Kokhan, Tetiana Havlin, Mariya Shcherbyna, Maria B.
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OSI UG 2

Experiences of War, Revolution and Change in the 20th Century

Paper Session
Robert Kindler, Vydra Zbyněk, Maren Hachmeister, Yaroslav Zhuravlov
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OSI UG 4

Transnational Practices of Identity and Resilience

Paper Session
Denis Shedov, Nazira Abdinassir, Eugenia Seleznova, Marina Casado Guerrero, Fabian Krause
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room III

Anxieties of Ageing and Demographic Uncertainties in Southeastern Europe: A Conversation Across Disciplines

Round Table
Hannes Grandits, Attila Melegh, Florian Bieber, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, Ulf Brunnbauer, Galina Goncharova
17:00 – 18:30 | Room: OEI 101

The Glory Pipeline: War Myths, Education, and the Politics of Memory in Russia after 2022

Paper Session
Arseniy Kumankov, Olga Mennecke, N N, Ivan Formin, Holger Kuße

Friday, October 9, 2026

HFB Auditorium C
HFB Conference Room II
HFB Conference Room III
OEI 101
OEI 105
OEI 121
OEI 301
OEI 302A
OEI 302B
OEI 323
OEI Auditorium A, 026
OSI UG 1
OSI UG 2
OSI UG 3
OSI UG 4
09:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:00
15:00
16:00
17:00
18:00
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 302B

The Geoeconomics of Conflict

Paper Session
Matteo Falagiarda, Ceyhun Elgin, Thomas Barrett, Yahor Azarkevich
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room II

Militarization and Indoctrination of Ukrainian Children by the Russian Federation. OSCE Report Presentation

Report Presentation
Stefan Wolff
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OSI UG 1

Contested Spaces, Haunted Industries, and Sovereign Policies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Polish Borderlands

Paper Session
Veronika Warzycha, Karina Hoření, Maraike Vandergrift
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OSI UG 3

Negotiating Diasporic Identity: Cultural Productions and Narratives in Exile after 2020-2022

Paper Session
Nina Weller, Tania Arcimovich, Pavel Niakhayeu, Ulyana Veryna
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 302A

Film Discussion: Dolma Diaries & Caucasian Blues

Film Discussion
Oliver Müser
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OSI UG 4

Belonging in Conflict: Narratives of Memory, Space, and Identity

Paper Session
Marija Petrovic, Flavia Gheţu, Elisa Mucciarelli, Monika Podlogar
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 301

Stories of War and Nature: Narrating Ecocide during the Russian War against Ukraine

Paper Session
Olena Korzun, Anastasiia Bozhenko, Olena Pavlova, Tetiana Perga
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 121

History unearthed: The memory of the Second World War as a battleground after 2022

Paper Session
Alexander Etkind, Mykola Makhortykh, Svitlana Telukha, Andrea Pető
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 105

Academic Freedom in Central Asia: Challenges and Perspectives

Round Table
Feruza Madaminova, Assylzat Karabayeva, Dmitry Dubrovsky
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 101

Antigender Politics as an Outcome of Populism

Paper Session
Heidi Hein-Kircher, Ewelina Woźniak-Wrzesińska, Aleksandr Kochekovskii, Anna Eroshenko, Jane Doe
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI Auditorium A, 026

Intermedial Presentation: Literary and Visual Analysis

Intermedial presentation
Khrystyna Nahorniak, Iryna Malyshivska
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: HFB Conference Room III

Repression Without Borders: Transnational Authoritarian Practices and Diasporas from Russia, Belarus and Central Asia – A Länder-Analysen Roundtable

Book Presentation
Steve Swerdlov, Elena Rusakova, Vasily Naumov, Khursand Kurramov
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OSI UG 2

Late SU/Transformation

Paper Session
Susanne Maslanka, Filip Koźmiński, Mikołaj Poślada, Abigail Scripka, Andrejs Sirmais
09:00 – 10:30 | Room: OEI 323

The EU and its Neighboring Countries

Paper Session
Aleksandre Sakhechidze, Claudia Matthes, Swati Kulashri, Levan Kakhishvili
11:00 – 12:30 | Room: OEI 121

Bodies, Norms, and Control: Gender in Illiberal Societies

Project Presentation
Olha Norba, Julia Hackler, Farangis Davronova, Elizabeth Végh
11:00 – 12:30 | Room: OEI 105

Actors of Violence and their Representation in Times of Radical Change

Project Presentation
Natalia Sobczuk, Natalja Böhm, Aymen Aulaiwi, Anastasiia Serikova
11:00 – 12:30 | Room: OEI Auditorium A, 026

Formal Institutions and Informal Networks in the (Post-)Soviet region

Project Presentation
Laura Loew, Daria Tashkinova, Pauline Foret, Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun, Marius Heil
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OSI UG 4

Erasure and Belonging. Identity, exclusion, and memory

Paper Session
Marina Sivak, Liudmyla Pidkuimukha, Catalina Catana, Marija Petrovic, Adrienn Kácsor
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI 301

Food systems and the environment after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: disruptions and strategies

Paper Session
Mihai Varga, Jiayi Zhou, Angelina Davydova, Tetiana Grabovska, Olha Tertychna
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OSI UG 3

Uncertain Futures, Institutional Responses: Post-War Care, Welfare, and the “Problem” of Children in Central and Eastern Europe

Paper Session
Maria Buko, Ana Cergol Paradiž, Raphaela Bollwein, Sylvia Hershcovitz
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI 323

Democratic Backsliding

Paper Session
Oliver Reisner, Tatsiana Astrouskaya, John Doe, Michael Kuznetsov, Raj Desai
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI 121

Nation Building

Paper Session
Felix Schmidtke, Liena Galeja, Ojars Stepens, Ewa Ochman, Marcin Jędrysiak
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI 302B

Russian Political Technology and Foreign Interference

Paper Session
Tomáš Hoch, Andrea Peinhopf, Sophie Stammler, N. N., Sophia Winkler, Felix Krawatzek
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OSI UG 1

Cold War Border Regimes, Spaces, and Cases

Round Table
Corina Petrescu, Alison Lewis, Valentina Glajar, Douglas Selvage, Axel Hildebrandt
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI 101

Media Practices and the Production of (Un)Certainty in Conflict Societies

Paper Session
Roman Smirnov, Anna Gerasimova, Francisco Manuel Villegas Cara, Fabian Erlenmaier
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OSI UG 2

Fear and Loathing in Transition: Markets, Opportunity, and the Search for Order (1985–1995)

Paper Session
Anna Ivanova, Alexander V. Reznik, Anna Safronova, Gleb J. Albert
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI Auditorium A, 026

Resilience, emergency governance and social change in wartime Ukraine

Paper Session
Oksana Mikheieva, Oleksandra Keudel, Sophie Schmäing, Susann Worschech
14:00 – 15:30 | Room: OEI 105

Die politischen Systeme im östlichen Europa

Book Presentation
Timm Beichelt, Sonja Priebus
16:00 – 17:30 | Room: HFB Auditorium C

Risk as resource and commodity: critical perspectives on the “scholar at risk” ecosystem

Round Table
Gabriele Freitag, Andrea Pető, Dina Gusejnova, Nadiya Kiss, Tania Arcimovich, Elena Trifan

Venues

Henry Ford Building

Freie Universität Berlin
Garystraße 35
14195 Berlin

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Institute for East European Studies

Freie Universität Berlin
Garystraße 55
14195 Berlin

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Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science

Freie Universität Berlin 
Ihnestraße 22
14195 Berlin

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