Global History Colloquium: Brigitte Le Normand (Maastricht University) on “A Global History of Socialist Rijeka: How a Port Connected Yugoslavia to the World”
2 February 2026, 16:15-17:45 (in person)
FU Berlin, FMI, Room A336, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin
About the Talk:
Historians usually describe the development of cities in socialist Eastern Europe as shaped by internal or intra-systemic factors, such as the planned economy and socialist ideology. Yet, some cities were clearly impacted by their global embeddedness. This is the case of Rijeka, which became Yugoslavia’s most important port. Brigitte Le Normand shows how Yugoslavia’s ambitious maritime policy and develop shipping between the port and the rest of the world resulted in the rapid growth of the port and merchant navy. She then explores two ways in which this trajectory impacted life at the local scale – in the creation of global imaginaries that connected citizens to the world, and in urban development that ultimately alienated citizens from the sea and the urban space.
The Speaker:
Brigitte Le Normand is Associate Professor of European History in a Global Context at Maastricht University. Her research has examined the modernization project of socialist Yugoslavia from the perspective of urban planning, labour migration, and maritime transportation. Her current book project explores how the city of Rijeka was transformed by its incorporation into Yugoslavia and its designation as the state’s main port. In addition to leading the creation of the Rijeka Fiume in Flux mobile phone application, she is the author of Designing Tito’s Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism and Socialism in Belgrade; and Citizens without Borders: Yugoslavia and its Migrant Workers in Western Europe. She is the principal investigator of the ERC Consolidator project “FeMMiWork: Women Migrants from the Northern Mediterranean and Work in Postwar Northwestern Europe” (2026-2030).