How does war transform societies? How does war close off and create opportunities?
How does war challenge normative understandings of ethics, morality, gender, state capacity, social
obligation? How does war end? How are wars “made” and undone and by whom? How have warfare and
peacemaking changed over time? Our focus is Eastern and Central Europe, but we welcome projects on
Eurasia broadly conceived, including Central Asia and the Caucasus. We would like to move beyond
defining this region as “bloodlands” (in the phrasing of Timothy Snyder) in order to examine the
multiplicity of experiences of war and meanings ascribed to them by states, societies, and individuals. We
are interested in “wars” broadly defined: from the greatest military conflicts, such as World Wars I and II,
or civil wars that tore societies apart, or anti-colonial struggles that brought nations together—to less
conventional wars of the postmodern world: cold wars, information wars, hybrid wars and the war on
terror. We invite you to think of war not only as an event that takes place on battlefields and ends with
the signing of a peace treaty but also as a continuum that encompasses a wide range of human
experiences. Our chronology extends from the Napoleonic campaigns to the contemporary conflict in
Ukraine.
TOPICS OF INVESTIGATION COULD INCLUDE:
- Anticipation of war/anticipation of peace;
- The language of war: words, images, sounds;
- Imperial wars, anticolonial wars, civil wars;
- Cold wars, information wars, hybrid wars;
- Mafia wars, drug wars;
- War and civil society: state and private actors;
- War and the nation: questions of belonging, inclusion, exclusion;
- War and mobility: refugees, evacuees, displaced persons, prisoners of war;
- The occupiers and the occupied;
- War and the gender order;
- War and sexual violence, war and the body;
- War and the economy: collaboration and cooperation;
- War and “ordinary people”: survival and adaptation;
- Actors of War: dehumanizing and
- The home front: the mundane and theextraordinary;
- War and the arts: representation, entertainment, morale-building;
- War and the city: urban space and the built environment;
- War and peace: exiting war, reconciliating, pacifying, judging;
- The postwar society: rebuilding, remembering, forgetting;
- Memory of war: celebration and mourning.

ELIGIBILITY
The Summer School is open to PhD students (or students enrolled in a kandidat nauk program) and
young researchers (up to six years removed from their PhD or kandidat nauk degree). Proposals strong
on theory and empirical research are particularly welcome. The working language of the Summer School
is English. Participants must be comfortable working in English.